In digging up one of the tribes that makes up a major component in my personal genome I found only 500 "native speakers" were left and most of them lived within blow up range of an abandoned and rusting Russian nuclear submarine fleet!
Someone bothered to render their language (Skolt Sa'ami) into writing in the 1950s, but there has been a decided disinterest in learning to read it or write it so you can't actually pick up a printed dictionary or grammar book ~ just copies of typed out stuff.
Still, darned if I didn't figure out how to translate two family hand me down words that survived the 375 years that line had been in America.
I'm happy. They should move away from the submarines though.
Ko’st lij baar?
That is really fascinating. Good on ya. Genealogy research is so compelling.