I came across this diagram when doing some research on a history project. The diagram is of the trends in amount of speakers of the top languages in the US. It connects to our class discussions on language preservation and endangerment.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/28/chart-of-the-week-the-decline-of-yiddish-the-rise-of-tagalog/

Answering the question: What are ways in which you can teach these stories and these lessons then without translating, or is it better to keep these stories sacred/secret between their culture and our own? I would say that it is important that these stories are shared between cultures for the sake of cultural understanding and acceptance. However, I do believe that there has to be a movement within native speakers to preserve the language simultaneously in order to avoid loses in the nuances of the language. It is necessary for native speakers to teach young children the language to avoid the necessity of translation either to or from English. If we simultaneously rewrite these stories in English and the native language we will be able to create both greater understanding and preserve the language with greater accuracy. 

In the passage, Max Weinreich is quoted as saying, “a language is merely a dialect with an army and a navy.” How does this paradigm play out in our daily lives? And to what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement?