NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

and Russian chafed at the advantage the Internet g
ave not only American pop culture but also its lan
guage. For those who lived at the intersection of
modern technology and traditional cultures, the pr
oblem was even worse. “For a long time, technology
was the enemy,” says Inee Slaughter, executive di
rector of the New Mexico-based Indigenous Language
Institute, which teaches Native Americans and oth
er indigenous peoples how to use digital technolog
ies to keep their languages vital. Heritage langua
ges were being killed off by increasing urbanizati
on, the spread of formal education and the shift t
o cash crops, which ended the isolation of indigen
ous communities. Advances in technology seemed to
intensify the decline. “Even in 1999 or 2000, peop
le were saying technology killed their language,”
Slaughter says. “Community elders worried about it
. As television came into homes, English became pe
rvasive 24/7. Mainstream culture infiltrated, and
young kids want to be like that. It was a huge, hu
ge problem, and it’s still there. But now we know
ways technology can be helpful.”
For many tiny, endangered languages, digital techno
logy has become a lifeline.
When Traore was born, N’Ko had already been in use
for several years. But growing up, he did not kno
w it existed. At 6, he was sent from his village o
f Kiniebakoro in rural Guinea to live with a broth
er in Ivory Coast, where he learned to read and wr
ite in French, the language taught in school in bo
th countries. He never saw a book, newspaper, medi
cine label, store name or street sign in N’Ko.
And yet, N’Ko was invented to allow Mande speakers
like Traore to read and write in the languages th
ey spoke at home. In 1943, Solomana Kante, a teach
er’s son who worked as a merchant in Ivory Coast,
resolved to develop a written form for the Mande l
anguage family. (N’Ko means “I say” in Manden lang
uages; speakers of Manden languages can typically