'Click' and save: Professor strives to preserve language

Bonny Sands is struggling to help save a language on the brink of extinction.

Sands, an adjunct professor at Northern Arizona University, is one of a handful of professional linguists who specialize in Khoisan languages—the "click" languages of Africa.

Sands, who is spending the summer in Africa, is especially interested in the N/u language, from South Africa. Only 13 N/u speakers, all of whom are older than 65, remain today.

Her preservation efforts have helped lead to a newly created N/u writing system. The system should be finalized this month.

Another click language, !Xoon, has been well documented, Sands says, and she hopes to compare the two to see how they are related.

"There is a lot of knowledge tied up in language," Sands said. "Language is an important source of knowledge about one's heritage. Can you imagine being part of an ethnic group that has no information about its own history or language?"