Can Indigenous Language Comics Save a Mother Tongue? - SAPIENS - 0 views
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Lara Cowell on 23 Jan 22Ar Metlaloke (The Tlaloques Hunter), a comic book reimagining a traditional indigenous Mexican story, is the first of its kind written in Hñäñho, the language of the Ñäñho people, as well as in Spanish and English. It represents a larger, ongoing effort to preserve the people's culture, which is under threat as speakers decline and cultural bonds erode from centuries of colonial policies. The language-sometimes called Otomi, from the Spanish name for the community-is imperiled. Today it is one of several regional dialects of a mother tongue with fewer than 300,000 speakers, a figure that's been dropping for decades.