From New York City, this is Luxicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWhorter and you seem to like the language family shows.

I guess a lot of you want to know what languages are like around the world and how they divide

into groups.

I like the language family shows too.

It's one of my favorite subjects.

Like I said, I can't give you every language family, frankly.

Some of them lend themselves better to this format than others.

If I gave you all of them, it would get boring.

But there are a great many where I'd like to share with you what fascinates me about

them.

And one show I haven't done that some of you have asked for is a show about Native American

languages.

And of course, that's not a single family, as we'll see, not by a long shot.

Nevertheless, naturally, one thinks of them as a subject to themselves.

And so let's do Native American languages.

What are they?

What were they?

What makes them interesting?

You really get so very little about these languages.

Except actually these days in the media, you do read quite a bit about revitalization of

Native American languages, attempts to save them from no longer being spoken.

...