"New World" Film Revives Extinct Native American Tongue

From National Geographic News:

For his movie The New World, which arrives in U.S. theaters nationwide today, director Terrence Malick wanted to accurately recreate the sights and sounds of a 17th-century English colony.

The film depicts the clash between the native Algonquian Indians and English settlers at the founding of Jamestown in present-day Virginia. Malick therefore decided to have the Native American characters speak the indigenous language of the time—Virginia Algonquian.

There was only one problem: No one had spoken the tongue for about 200 years....

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