The language known as “Nuuchahnulth” “to the dwindling band of Native Americans who speak it . . . is like few others in its spectacular range of dialects and its capacity to convey complex ideas through simple words,” says Ian Herbert. But the language, spoken by natives of “the inaccessible Vancouver Island mountain range on Canada’s Western coast,” . . . . has been in steady decline ever since English speakers colonised North Western America in the 19th Century, reducing those able to speak it from 3500 in 1881 to around 300 today — and most of them aged over 60.” But now, according to Herbert’s report for The New Zealand Herald, “Salvation may now have arrived, however, with the first dictionary of the language to be created in its 5000-year existence, which has been completed by a Canadian-born linguist based at Newcastle University.” Herbert reports Edward Sapir‘s original work on the language, updated by Newcastle’s Dr. John Stonham, “is being despatched to Vancouver Island to support the efforts of elders to revive Nuuchahnulth among younger members of the community’s 10,000 population, who have drifted into the predominant use of English.”