Yet technology, often blamed for accelerating language loss, is also emerging as a powerful tool for preservation. Machine learning algorithms can now assist in analysing and documenting grammatical structures. Mobile applications allow language learners to practise with interactive exercises. Video conferencing connects scattered communities of speakers who might otherwise never meet.
In New Zealand, the revival of te reo Maori offers a model of what is possible. Decades of government support, immersion schools, and media programming in Maori have increased the number of speakers from fewer than fifty thousand in the 1970s to more than three hundred thousand today.
"Revitalisation is possible," said Dr. Rawinia Higgins, a professor of Maori studies at Victoria University of Wellington. "But it requires sustained commitment from governments, communities, and individuals. There are no shortcuts."
Back in Oaxaca, Concepcion Vasquez spends her afternoons recording stories, songs, and conversations with a young linguist from the University of Texas who has made it her life's work to document Zapotec Miahuatec. The recordings will join a growing digital archive that now contains material from more than four hundred endangered languages.
It is painstaking, unglamorous work. But for the communities involved, the stakes are deeply personal. As one elder from a First Nations community in British Columbia put it: "Our language is not just how we talk. It is who we are."