In March 2016, a group of people walked into a theater in New Mexico, USA to watch the movie Finding Nemo. The movie first hit the big screen in 2003 and it was a great success. Now it came back! What was special about it this time? It was dubbed(配音) in Navajo. That's the language spoken by the Navajo, one of the biggest Native American tribes(美国土著部落). This movie wasn't made just for fun, though. It was made to save a dying language.
The number of people who speak Navajo is dropping. In 20 14, only about 164, 000 people spoke it at home. That was down from about 173, 000 in 2005.
Like many other Native American languages, Navajo has been in trouble for a long time. In the 1800s, thousands of Native American kids were forced to attend boarding schools. They were allowed to speak only English there. Over the years, fewer people learned their native languages. Some of these languages have been lost forever.
Today, many Navajo kids aren't good at speaking Navajo. Some people worry that if today's kids don't learn Navajo and pass it down, the language could disappear.
Information Card
|
The year when the movie Finding Nemo first hit the screen |
|
|
The language that the new Finding Nemo was dubbed |
|
|
The purpose of the movie coming back again |
|
|
The number of people that spoke Navajo at home in 2014 |
|
|
The language many Native American kids were only allowed to speak in their boarding schools in the 1800s |
|
