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From https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-col1-tongva-language-native-american-tribe/

Tongva, Los Angeles’ first language, opens the door to a forgotten time and place
by Thomas Curwen
May 9, 2019

Each month they gather, practicing pronunciation, mastering the use of particles, singing songs and playing word games under the guidance of Pam Munro, a linguist from UCLA who has been teaching these classes for 15 years.

She calls her work “a reclamation effort” for a language that is no longer used in conversations. She avoids calling Tongva extinct; that, she said, is a hurtful pronouncement upon a culture that still exists and a world that in the eyes of many has never disappeared.

Like a detective following clues, Munro studied the work left by earlier linguists and ethnographers and slowly reassembled Tongva.

Much is irretrievable, but in this classroom — in the intonation of words and the careful assembly of phrases — lies an invocation of another time and place.

Read the full article at https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-col1-tongva-language-native-american-tribe/