Seeking Rare Language Speakers

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Documenting endangered languages comes at a cost. The time and money linguists have to spend to travel to remote areas of Latin America are hard to come by. So researchers at CU-Boulder are looking for native speakers closer to home. So far, some of their best finds have come from a home decor shop in Boulder. Danice Crawford is the owner of Marisol Imports and she knows people who speak the rare language Zapotec. "It's a really pretty language. It sounds like Japanese to me," she says. Crawford sends folks onto Linguist Andrew Cowell at CU. Cowell just started his search for speakers of rare languages in Colorado, and has already had some luck. Interview originally aired 9/13/2010.