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Even in Australia, many people are unaware that Aboriginal people have transformed English into a new language, Kriol. As with Hawai`i Creole English (HCE, commonly known as "pidgin") and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), to many people, the idea that Kriol is a legitimate form of speech is unfamiliar, and even absurd. In this commentary, linguist John McWhorter proceeds to demonstrate why creoles are legitimate languages, and that "nonstandard speech is not, in any scientific sense, substandard. These forms of speech are not broken. In fact, there is order, subtlety, and even majesty in these ways of talking."

University of Michigan professor Carmel O'Shannessy has discovered a language born just a few decades ago. "Light Warlpiri" is spoken in the aboriginal community of Lajamanu in the Northern Territory of Australia.

The film "Language Matters" asks what we lose when languages die and how we can save them. It was filmed around the world: on a remote island off the coast of Australia, where 400 Aboriginal people speak 10 different languages, all at risk; in Wales, where Welsh, once in danger, is today making a comeback; and in Hawaii, where a group of Hawaiian activists is fighting to save the native tongue.

Indigenous researchers are up against a ticking clock: Of the 4,000 Indigenous languages worldwide, one dies every two weeks with its last speaker. "Within the next five to 10 years, we'll lose most of the Native American languages in the U.S.," Michael Running Wolf, founder of Indigenous in AI, an international community of Native, Aboriginal and First Nations engineers, said. Running Wolf has dedicated his career to preventing this loss. He leads First Languages AI Reality, an initiative of the Mila-Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, where researchers are building speech recognition models for over 200 endangered Indigenous languages in North America.