Breathing New Life into an Almost-Lost Language

At home growing up, Antonio Jorge Medeiros Batista Silva (Brazil, Pearson College UWC, Dartmouth ’25) heard a few words here and there in Krenak, the disappearing language of his father’s indigenous side of the family. He began studying languages at Dartmouth, then secured a 2023 Projects for Peace grant to spend last summer creating a Krenak textbook for young people.

When he started his summer project in Brazil, community leaders suggested that instead of trying to collect Krenak’s very few living native speakers, Antonio could more usefully provide greater access to existing dictionaries and dissertations on the language.

“Our first solution was not to create new materials, but to reclaim the existing ones — turn them into video tutorials on Krenak sound systems, sentence formation, grammar, and more,” Antonio wrote in an essay for the Endangered Languages Project. “Once we understood what the community really wanted our work finally got a flow to it.”

The Web-based platform that Antonio named Kjeme Itchok has been adding resources suggested in its online chatbox. “Community members, local teachers, and scholars of indigenous linguistics have all sent individual works our way that they believe would be useful for teaching and learning Krenak,” he writes. Plans include publishing an interactive dictionary, and offering trainings in using the online resource.

“Kjeme Itchok is a living project, and it won’t be done for a while,” Antonio concludes. “This isn’t my bachelor’s thesis I’m working on — it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be there for my relatives, ancestors, and future generations of Krenak speakers.”

This profile is part of the “Undergraduates in Action” series from the 2024 Annual Report.