Ninety-one-year-old Katrina Esau is the last known speaker of N|uu. Years of colonialism and apartheid had almost wiped out this indigenous South African language. As a young girl, Katrina was told to be ashamed of her native tongue and instead speak Afrikaans. But as an adult, Esau set out to preserve N|uu by founding a school in her hometown Upington and creating a N|uu dictionary.
Protecting an Endangered Language
Despite having two living sisters, Esau has no one to speak her language with, aside from the family members and children she had taught a few phrases. “I miss speaking to someone,” she said. “It doesn’t feel good. You talk, you walk, you know … you miss someone who can just sit with you and speak N|uu with you.”
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