Verdena Parker
Encyclopedia
Verdena Parker is the last fluent speaker of the Hupa language
, an Athabaskan language
spoken by the Hoopa Valley Tribe, indigenous to northern California. While other children of her generation were sent to boarding schools, isolating them from their families, Parker was raised by her grandmother, who spoke Hupa with her. Through adulthood, Parker continued to speak Hupa with her mother daily, maintaining a high level of fluency despite language loss
in the rest of the Hupa community.
Beginning in 2008 and continuing through the present, Parker has regularly worked with researchers at UC Berkeley and Stanford to provide recordings of spoken Hupa for the documentation of the Hupa language. She is also active in language revitalization projects.
Hupa language
-External links :* * overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages*...
, an Athabaskan language
Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan or Athabascan is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family...
spoken by the Hoopa Valley Tribe, indigenous to northern California. While other children of her generation were sent to boarding schools, isolating them from their families, Parker was raised by her grandmother, who spoke Hupa with her. Through adulthood, Parker continued to speak Hupa with her mother daily, maintaining a high level of fluency despite language loss
Language death
In linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
in the rest of the Hupa community.
Beginning in 2008 and continuing through the present, Parker has regularly worked with researchers at UC Berkeley and Stanford to provide recordings of spoken Hupa for the documentation of the Hupa language. She is also active in language revitalization projects.