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Nancy Dorian
American linguist · United States · On the map · Academics · Lived 1936 to 2024 · aged 88
Nancy Currier Dorian was an American linguist who carried out research into the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo.
Nancy Dorian is read about 5 times a day, in 11 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 19 August 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
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About this person
Due to their isolation from other Gaelic-speaking communities, these East Sutherland villages presented a good opportunity to study language death. Dorian's study is possibly the longest such study in the field. She was considered "a prime authority" on language death. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect, her study into the decline of Gaelic in East Sutherland, is considered "the first major monograph" on this subject. According to linguist Joan Argenter, Dorian's name "is well known to scholars working in" several areas of linguistics.
