Auna Nygaard

Auna is extremely passionate about preserving endangered languages. Regarding this important work, she says, “There is no point in studying language if you are not helping others. Colonization and language stigmatization have pushed cultural worlds to the brink of extinction, and we have the opportunity to write them down in the wake of their erasure. Losing a language is more than losing a series of phrases; you lose an entire world. This is especially true of oral traditions. The loss of even one generation risks the loss of an entire history—preserving this language is truly turning the ‘hearts of the children to the fathers.’ These cultural worlds are worth saving, and they are life-changing to learn from.”

In addition to preserving languages, Auna is a published researcher and recently presented her paper, “Greenie-Be-Gone: An Exploration of Mormon Missionary Slang,” at the 2022 American Dialect Society conference. Regarding her research for her paper, Auna says, “I feel like it’s the perfect experiment that sociolinguists would never get approval to do.” We are grateful that BYU supports creative undergraduate students, like Auna, as they pursue their interests.

Watch Auna’s explanation of her missionary slang research here.