Almost Extinct
Loretta Kelsey is the last person on the planet who is fluent in Elem
Pomo, a dialect of the people indigenous to Clear Lake, California
that dates back to over 8,000 years ago. Because Elem Pomo was never
written, only passed on orally, it has nearly vanished; it’s Kelsey’s
goal to stop that from happening. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an
interesting piece about her quest to revive the language:
It wasn’t so long ago that dozens spoke Elem Pomo. When Kelsey was
a child in the 1950s and ’60s, her parents and many other elders in
the 250-member tribe were fluent, and her mother spoke no English.
But as the older folks died off and the younger ones forayed into the
broader society around them to make a living, many native ways were
lost. It was a disintegration that was millennia in coming.
Now, with the help of her nephew, Robert Geary, and recordings of Elem
Pomo made by UC Berkeley linguistic students from the 1940s through
the 1960s, Kelsey hopes to help ensure a future for her native tongue.
What’s interesting is the fact that she hasn’t spoken much Elem Pomo
for decades, Kelsey remembers it fluently. At 59, she’s working
methodically to record the language before she dies by writing a
dictionary and phrase handbook, and conducting language camps for her
tribe.
Let’s hope the revival succeeds!
