New Crow Dictionary App Released to the Crow Community

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Nov. 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- After four years of work, the Crow Language Consortium in partnership with the Crow Tribe, The Language Conservancy, and Little Big Horn College is announcing the release of a breakthrough Crow language app. The Crow Language Dictionary app has over 10,000 entries and audio files recorded by Crow speakers. Today, the Crow Language Consortium announced the release day for the dictionary app to be November 16^th and will be available for free download on both IOS and Android devices.

The app was built as a collaborative effort between over 50 Crow language speakers working together with a team of linguists and other programmers from around the country over the course of numerous collection events and review sessions.  The app and the dictionary promise to be a milestone in the history of the preservation of the Crow Language.  Janine Pease, Project Director of the program, stated that "The Crow people have been waiting for an app like this for years, we are so pleased that this finally happened. We know that young learners of Crow will find this an indispensable resource for their learning."

Despite Crow still having a number of speakers, the fluency rate has dropped from nearly 85% in the 1960s to less than 20% today. Without active speakers of the language, parents are not able to pass their cultural history on to their children. The Crow Indian Tribe has set out to overcome these issues by taking steps toward preserving and revitalizing their language.

The Language Conservancy will host an app launch event virtually through Zoom on Thursday, November 19^th at 1pm MT. The event will honor the Crow speakers and linguists who have worked on this project. The launch event is open to the public to attend. Details about the event can be found on the Crow Language Consortium's Facebook page.

Join the event by clicking the zoom link below:

Crow Dictionary App Launch
Thursday, November 19^th
1:00pm Mountain Time
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/92107670641 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CrowLanguage

SOURCE The Language Conservancy