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Linguist David Harrison Records Hidden Indian Language

On a research trip to a remote region in India to find speakers of two little-known languages, Associate Professor of Linguistics K. David Harrison (left) found the unexpected - a third language, Koro, that was not known outside the area. He documents these and other dying languages - and his attempts to revitalize them - in his new book, The Last Speakers (2010). Harrison's efforts to document Koro garnered wide coverage: on global wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters, national broadcast news sites including ABC News, CNN, and CBS News, as well as in major dailies such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times. It also appeared in The Times of India, BBC News, and Science Daily, among others, and he discussed it on NPR's All Things Considered. Harrison is an authority on endangered and dying languages with particular interest in connections between language and biodiversity, ethnoecology, and cultural survival. He is also the author of When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (2007). He and colleague Gregory Anderson lead the scientific research for the Enduring Voices Project, a partnership between the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages they founded and National Geographic Mission Programs.

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