On a tranquil November evening in the Hamptons, I greet Wunetu Wequai Tarrant, a linguist from the Shinnecock Indian Nation, at Guild Hall. I’ve been to the museum countless times for art openings and theatrical performances, but tonight, seated among 15 local card sharks, the experience is something else entirely. For two hours, consonants fly through the air as we play Uno in Shinnecock, a dialect of Algonquian last spoken fluently by Tarrant’s great-great-grandparents’ generation in the 1920s.
It’s a linguistic tradition that was passed from Tarrant’s great-grandfather, Chief ThunderBird, the last Shinnecock Nation Chief, to her mother, a founding member of the Algonquian Language Revitalization Project. However, it’s her grandmother, Princess Chee Chee ThunderBird (Elizabeth) Haile, matriarch of the ThunderBird clan and a beloved local teacher, who prompted Tarrant’s studies. “My Gramma Chee started to progress in age and when I looked at what we had in terms of the language, it felt like a dire situation,” she says. “I felt an immediacy to document what she could remember. My mother and I would visit her, share reconstructions we’d heard, and ask, ‘Does this sound right? Does this sound like something someone would say?’”
As my inhibitions dissipate, so do my chances of winning—and I ask Tarrant why she wanted to host the event as part of First Literature Project, an initiative launched in 2022 to help preserve Indigenous oral narratives, languages, and traditions. “While Uno is fun and recognizable, the purpose of FLP is to tell our stories from our Shinnecock perspectives,” she says. “So much documentation is anthropologist-led, and inherently biased due to the outsider’s lens.”
There’s a theory that it takes one generation to lose a heritage language and three to recover it. Coupled with a United Nations report about the rapidity at which spoken languages are disappearing, a sense of urgency underpins these preservation efforts. Educational vacations, family heritage trips, and language immersion courses are enduring travel trends—but studying languages lesser known within the Western world is a relatively new one. While it’s long been common for travelers to study cultural art forms and dominant languages, what about traveling to learn endangered languages?
When it comes to questions such as how languages should be classified by UNESCO—and who should study them—the only credible opinions come from the communities in question. From a leafy perch on Hawai’i Island, Dr. Makalapua Alencastre, chair of Hawai’i Public Charter School Commission and founder of Ke Kula ‘o Samuel Kamakau Laboratory School, explains her work re-establishing the Hawaiian language across the islands. “Today, as we build our number of language speakers, it’s very important that in addition to native Hawaiians learning the language, so are our neighbors and friends,” she says. “Language lives in communities. It would be self-defeating to be exclusive and hold the language away from others.”
Founded in 1929, the Paris Yiddish Center – Medem Library’s existence is a testament to collective resilience: many of the 21,000 works in its collection were saved because they were hidden in basements during World War II. Macha Fogel, the center’s temporary director, explains that while Yiddish is common in Hasidic communities, the language lost prominence across the Jewish world. Fogel says, “It’s important that scholars, artists, or simply curious people study [Yiddish], so that access to all this non-religious material remains existent.” Through Paris Yiddish Center’s summer programs, travelers balance morning studies with Yiddish singing, theater, and cooking classes.
The vibrant pace is similar at Oideas Gael, an Irish language cultural center with language immersions in Gleann Cholm Cille, County Donegal, Ireland. Thematic itineraries include painting, weaving, and flute playing—all through the medium of Irish Gaelic, taught by local tutors. Accommodations include a string of thatched roof homestays within walking distance to the center.
Rónán Ó Dochartaigh, director at Oideas Gael, estimates that “2,200 travelers from 29 countries around the world, ages 18 to mid-80s” visit annually to study the language; a number that feels especially significant when he notes the local population is 700. “A small number of them married students they met during the program,” he adds. Whether for love or learning, the lyrical charm of Oideas Gael attracts an eclectic mix of students including musicians, doctors, postmen, psychologists, and politicians, including former President of Ireland Mary McAleese—a regular guest.
Ó Dochartaigh reflects on the path that returned him to this tiny coastal town: “I grew up in the area. I had a summer job at Oideas Gael. I worked and lived in other places, but kept my connection to the language because of my experience working here. We want to show that learning the language can contribute positive economic benefit.” Clearly, the way we communicate sustains us in more ways than one.
Meanwhile, in Ollantaytambo, a small town near Cusco in Peru, Awamaki’s sustainable tourism programs connect travelers with Quechuan women entrepreneurs for homestays and language lessons. “Visitors follow the rhythm of the community,” says Awamaki executive director Kennedy Leavens. “After waking at first light, host families go about their days and so do their visitors, whether that’s a hike or alpaca shearing. Then, they join their family, maybe preparing food or tending fields.” The ability to choose when to welcome travelers is tantamount to respectful tourism, so Awamaki adheres to local preferences not to host homestays during peak agricultural periods or on Sundays.
Despite the beauty of their High Andes homeland and many years teaching Quechua, neither Jenny Alvarez Molina, an instructor at Awamaki, nor Valerio Fernandez Coronel, co-founder of Apulaya Cultural Center, can translate “nature” in their mother tongue. It turns out that Quechua doesn’t distinguish humans from nature—a concept that prompts a deeper appreciation for it among travelers. When asked if visitors should study Quechua, Coronel notes, “On one hand, [travelers] learning the language would help preserve the language. But preserving the language should not be the purpose. It should be that Quechua holds the same value as hegemonic languages.”
Yet throughout centuries of colonization, languages endure—you can witness them in words we speak every day. “Everybody on Long Island speaks Shinnecock to some extent,” Tarrant notes, explaining that Amagansett means “sweet water” and Sagaponack means “where potatoes grow.” In Hawai’i, Alencastre observes that “the tourism industry could lean into the language a lot more.” She touts learning programs through Ōlelo|Online that “teach students from around the world—most of them are not Hawaiian.” Founder Kaliko Beamer-Trapp also hosts in-person week-long immersions through Aloha Music Camp, teaching travelers traditional storytelling mediums that transcend words.
While Tarrant’s First Literature Project will exhibit at Ma’s House on the Shinnecock Reservation through June, the communal focus is to incubate teachers through Ayim Kutoowonk (She Speaks) collective. “We’re always thinking about the descendants we will never meet,” Tarrant says. “They deserve to receive this gift of language that their ancestors made for them. What kind of world are we leaving for them? What kind of culture?”
History has proven the tangible benefits of linguistic diversity; during WWII, the Navajo Code Talkers’ unwritten language saved thousands of lives. But the ways we communicate offer us more ephemeral gifts, too. According to Alencastre, Hawaiian brings speakers closer to that most famous of concepts: Aloha. “If you experience true Aloha, it’s being empathetic and caring for others,” she says. “Our world needs that more than ever. ”
Meanwhile, Ó Dochartaigh highlights how Irish Gaelic is now modernizing, with new words created for modern concepts that didn’t exist when the language was first recorded back in the fifth century. “There’s a joke that Irish doesn’t have a word for this,” he says, “but suddenly now, we do.”