Indigenous Languages of North America

The indigenous languages of North America are highly endangered, especially in the United States and Canada. A majority of the languages that were spoken before European contact have become extinct. Most of the surviving languages are on the verge of extinction, and only a handful have any likelihood of surviving more than another couple of generations. For example, in the 2011 Canadian census, only 15% of people who identified as aboriginal listed an indigenous language as their mother tongue; less than 9% reported that an indigenous language was the language they used most often in the home. Though the total number of indigenous language speakers in Canada has increased slowly over several decades, they make up a rapidly diminishing share of the aboriginal population and ...