ISU professor studies and speaks Welsh, Shoshoni and more
Anthropology professor Chris Loether is the director of the American Indian Studies Program, director of the Linguistics Program, and co-director of the Shoshoni Language Project at Idaho State University.
Growing up in a language-rich area inspired him to study multiple languages. Loether has studied 26 languages in total and speaks five fluently.
“I grew up in Los Angeles, which has tons and tons of languages spoken all over the place,” said Loether. “I started learning languages when I was about two or three [years old], and then kept learning.”
Traveling with his family had a lot to do with his own language exploration.
“My family took a trip across the country in 1976 for the bicentennial, and we went through the Navajo land, and all the different Indian reservations,” said Loether. “Through my interest in Indian languages, I became interested in dying languages, languages that are at risk, language maintenance and language revitalization.”
His thirst for learning new languages did not end there.
“When I was about 12, [my family] moved to London, and our friends in London were Welsh,” said Loether. “I was just fascinated that two hours out of London, 20 percent of the population spoke Welsh, this totally different language. I really wanted to learn Welsh,” said Loether.
He soon discovered that Welsh shared a similarity with many Native American languages.
“It’s an endangered language, which makes it different than learning Spanish or German,” said Loether. “I started thinking, maybe what’s going on over there is what’s going on over here.”
Loether has become familiar with some of the methods used to save dying languages, like language immersion programs.
“I wondered if what works to save a language in one area can work with another area,” said Loether. “In Hawaii, there is a program where you can go from kindergarten all the way to your master’s degree taught completely in the Hawaiian language.”
Loether highlighted the importance of language in everyday life.
“Depending on how your language divides up the world, you’re going to look at things differently,” said Loether.
