Bringing a language back to life
A new dictionary app, four years in the making, aims to spark a Crow comeback
Monday, November 23, 2020
Montana Free Press
With fewer and fewer fluent speakers of the Crow language, advocates for revitalizing it hope a free online dictionary can aid people already working to bolster their skills and make learning the language more accessible.
On Thursday, a group of linguists, native Crow speakers and programmers
launched the app
after four years of work on the project. The dictionary contains more than 10,000 entries and audio of Crow language speakers demonstrating pronunciation. It is free to
download on Android and IOS devices. The group that spearheaded the project — a coalition of the nonprofit
Language Conservancy, the Crow Nation, Little Big Horn College and the
Crow Language Consortium
— celebrated the app’s launch during a virtual event that included a demonstration and remarks from participants in the project.



Chris Aadland covers tribal affairs in Montana as a Report for America corps member based in Billings. Before moving to Montana he covered the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming for the Casper Star-Tribune, and has also reported for the Wisconsin State Journal. Contact Chris at caadland@montanafreepress.org and follow @cjaadland on Twitter.
This story originally appeared on Montana Free Press. It is published under a Creative Commons license.
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