Introduction to the Initiative

 We are finally learning, sometimes rather late (and to our subsequent sorrow) to conserve air, water, mineral, flora, fauna and electricity resources. BUT WHAT ABOUT LANGUAGE AND CULTURE RESOURCES? We still are dreadfully wasteful and destructive with respect to them. Small languages and language communities throughout our land, and throughout the world, are now struggling to survive. Unless something is done to help them survive, by fostering their intergenerational continuity, their more effective acquisition and retention in homes, families, neighborhoods, schools and the broader community, more than half of all the languages in the world today are destined to die out! The same is true for California, where more than half of the languages in the USA have important concentrations. Many have died out in the past generation. Very few are taught effectively or in close association with community specialists, community events and community roles for adults, young people or children. The Stanford University Initiative for the Maximization of Language Resources seeks to reverse the above mentioned depletion of one of our state's, nation's and world's most valuable resources. It seeks to work with educators, parents, children researchers and policy makers at every level (local, statewide, regional and national) toward the conservation and augmentation of the most human of all resources: the languages and cultures that enrich our lives and give them constructive purpose and direction.