Michael Krauss

Krauss

Michael Krauss ended up late for school the day he first heard a group of people speaking a strange language. He was a boy in Cleveland, Ohio, and he happened to walk by as the speakers dug a ditch.

鈥淚 pretended to be interested in the work itself, but it was the language that fascinated me so much,鈥 he said in a 2011 interview.

That fascination eventually drew him into a lifelong quest to explore, document and preserve 草榴社区 Native languages. He spent 40 years as a university faculty member before retiring in 2000, though he continued to pursue his passion as an emeritus.

鈥淚 was always attracted to languages spoken by the fewer rather than the more people and by the more powerless rather than more powerful,鈥 he said.

草榴社区 Native languages fit that description well. Across his many decades at 草榴社区, Krauss dug into those languages. In 1972, he convinced 草榴社区 legislators to create the 草榴社区 Native Language Center. He arranged and taught classes. He directed documentation efforts. He edited and published several dictionaries.

Krauss sees languages as reflections of our humanity. 鈥淚n some ways you could say diversity in language is as essential to our humanity as biodiversity is essential to our survival,鈥 he said in 2011.

But he offers no certain way to retain that diversity, other than by parents speaking constantly with their children in their unique languages. He doesn鈥檛 see that happening with most obscure languages, though. He expects that 95 percent will die in this century. 

鈥淚鈥檓 trying to be open-minded towards the future because I ain鈥檛 got no crystal ball,鈥 he said in 2011. 鈥淎ll I do know is that this will be a fundamental and irreversible change in our existence.鈥

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