According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, only three American Indian languages spoken in the United States and Canada today will survive into the mid-21st century. And while the United Nations declared 2008 to be the International Year of Languages, the Oneida Nation has been actively enlisting its Members for nearly 15 years to assume the mantle of a student and begin the process that will lead to the Onyota’a:ká: (Oneida) language’s renaissance. Four years ago, the language program began in earnest as eight Oneida Members became a part of a unique pairing in Indian Country, joining with Berlitz – the 129-year-old internationally acclaimed language immersion method employed by diplomats. Under the program’s tutelage, the Nation began intensive Onyota’a:ká: language courses to ensure the survival of its indigenous tongue. The task is not easy; Onyota’a:ká: is a complex, difficult language to learn. And although the instruction has veered from the original Berlitz accelerated method because of the language’s complexity, the assessment of Richie Van Vliet, local instructional supervisor for Berlitz Language Center, who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics, still holds true:

“Berlitz divides languages into two sections of difficulty, A and B. French would be on the A list, meaning people can learn it with relative ease. Chinese, Greek and Hebrew would be on the B list due to their complexity and since they require students to learn a different alphabet or characters. “I’m going to make up a C list for Oneida. It is a very hard language. It will take a student more hours to learn because of the vocabulary. Word lengths are so long. Learning English can be compared to a train with one car following another and another; in Oneida it’s a circle.”

Ask Sheri Beglen, an Onyota’a:ká: language instructor, who has been a student of the language for 14 years. Aside from instructing classes, Sheri also has been editing and re-writing chapters for the curriculum. Her own vocabulary has grown and her understanding of the spoken language expanded, but Sheri admits it’s still diffiuclt. “I’m still learning, and I do get frustrated,” said Sheri. “But I never want to quit; I continue for the love of the language. I hope it will grow and become a functional language, one people use on a regular basis. That is the only way it will survive.” As the UNESCO Document, “Language Vitality and Endangerment,” states:

Language diversity is essential to the human heritage. Each and every language embodies the unique cultural wisdom of a people. The loss of any language is thus a loss for all humanity. The extinction of each language results in the irrecoverable loss of unique cultural, historical and ecological knowledge. Each language is a unique expression of the human experience of the world. Thus, the knowledge of any single language may be the key to answering fundamental questions of the future. Every time a language dies, we have less evidence for understanding patterns in the structure and function of human language, human prehistory and the maintenance of the world’s diverse ecosystems. Above all, speakers of these languages may experience the loss of their language as a loss of their original ethnic and cultural identity.

The Oneida Nation is working diligently to circumvent such a grim, preventable scenario and is experiencing unprecedented success.