The UCA Linguistics Society hosted a meeting featuring University of Mississippi Professor of Modern Languages Felice Coles to discuss the importance of linguistics and endangered languages Feb. 24.

The topics were addressed over two presentations, one focusing on the importance of linguistics and the other focusing on Isleño, an endangered dialect of Spanish spoken in Louisiana.

The first presentation focused on the field of linguistics as a whole going into the various fields of linguistics and how they can each be applied in the modern day and would be held during X-Period.

“Remember that linguistics touches many other fields,” Coles said in her presentation. “So you can combine linguistics with several other opportunities such as, and I speak as a PhD, a regular program coordinator, we have many teachers interested in language education. So, you might want to learn those processes of language acquisition or language learning.”

Similar sentiments to language as a whole could be found within the club.

“Language is what makes us human,” club adviser and UCA professor of linguistics Lynn Burley said. “I mean, every living species has a communication system, but human language, as far as we know, is unique. I believe it’s our ability to lie, or tell a story really that makes our human language unique.”

After the x-period presentation, Coles presented to a class in mostly Spanish about the Isleño dialect.

According to the US National Parks’ official website, the name of the dialect first meant “islander” and was used to describe the people who lived in the Canary Islands.

This group later traveled to Southern Louisiana in 1778.

They later traveled up the Mississippi Delta as hunter-gatherers due to the lack of good soil.

Members of the Linguistics Society helped specify the importance of the endangered dialect.

“When a dialect or language dies, you lose on culture, and also a scientific glimpse into the different ways that language has diverged” club President and senior linguistics major Kyle Urban said. “You lose out on a culture, a heritage, a history.”

Coles said Isleño Spanish is specifically difficult to preserve due to having so few speakers.

“In one of Dr. Coles’s papers, she talks about how there’s maybe 20 speakers left of this dialect, and she also claimed in that paper that are two forms of these languages, and one of this is almost completely gone, which is sort of a complete erasure,” club Treasurer and senior linguistics major Even Bray said, “not erasure, that implies some, direct intentionality, but that implies some, direct intentionality, but it’s an erasing from history of all of that.”

The event was originally scheduled to be a two day event where Coles would give the two lectures and another lecture for a separate event.

However, due to poor weather conditions within her state, Coles had to stay at her home and give the lectures over zoom

The Linguistics Society is recognised by UCA as a Recognized Student Organization (RSO).

While it focuses on linguistics, anyone who is interested in the subject can join.