The first modern dictionary of Sahaptin has been published. Sahaptin is a language of the Northwestern plateau, spoken in the drainage of the Columbia River in southern Washington, northern Oregon, and southwestern Idaho. There are now no more than 200 speakers. This dictionary is of the Yakima dialect, called by its speakers Ichishkíin Sɨ́nwit.
Dictionaries of endangered languages appear pretty frequently because so many languages are endangered, but it isn’t that often that a dictionary of this calibre appears. The authors are Virginia Beavert, a native speaker of the language who received the Ken Hale Prize in 2007, and Sharon Hargus, a linguist at the University of Washington better known for her work on Athabascan languages. It comes with a CD containing over 9,200 sound files. Even better, the Sahaptin-English portion of the dictionary is available on-line.