Five ways indigenous languages can be championed for learners

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages. In doing this, it says, it wants to acknowledge that

languages play a crucial role in the daily lives of people…

Indigenous languages tend to be spoken by politically marginalised groups whose nations were historically colonised and their languages sidelined in favour of the colonisers’.
There are over 7,000 known living languages; about one third of them are in Africa. Most African children grow up in multilingual environments, and are often familiar with more than one language before they enter school. More...