I look on the website

at the list of countries

that have endangered languages.

I haven’t heard of most of them.

Azerbaijan. Belarus. Brunei.

Burkina Faso. Caledonia. East Timor.

Gambia. Guinea-Bissau. Kiribati.

Kyrgyzstan. New Caledonia.

Niue. Oman. Pitcairn. Suriname.

This is already impossible.

Lizard Picks for Us (of Course)

Then Lizard clicks a few more keys on the computer

and points to the screen where it says “Guernésiais.”

“Red dot for severely endangered.”

She clicks a few more times

to Google a few more things.

“And there’s some language guides right here online.”

But…but…but…

What about the other severely endangered languages?

There’s a whole huge world filled

with desperate little red dots.

For the first time I understand

why my mother feels completely

overwhelmed all the time.

Lizard looks over at me expectantly,

so I say the thing she expects me to say.

“Great!”

We could spend the rest of our lives

picking which red dot to save

and not saving any.

Or we could just decide:

“Let’s save this one.”

A Dot on a Dot

The language Lizard picked

is called Guernésiais.

I don’t know how to pronounce that.

But if we are going to speak this language

we have to at least be able to say its name.

Lizard looks that up, too.

“It’s JERR-nehz-yay.”

“JERR-nehz-yay,”

I echo.

It’s the language people speak—

well, used to speak—

on a little island called Guernsey

in the English Channel

between France and England.

The red dot for severely endangered

practically covers up

the dot on the map for Guernsey.

I like that we’re going to save

a dot on a dot.

A dot on a dot

seems even more in need of saving.

Two Hundred Plus Two

The website says only two hundred people

still speak Guernésiais.

After Lizard and I start speaking it,

then it will be two hundred plus two.

Will that make a big enough difference

to count as helping to save a language?

When Lizard saved the bird,

she knew the bird was saved

when she and her mother got a call

from the bird rehab place

and went to watch them release it

and saw it fly away.

How will we know

when we’ve done enough

to save Guernésiais?

Lizard must be thinking the same thing.

“We’re just two people,” she says,

“but, remember, if we get everyone

at Southern Peaks Middle School

to start speaking it,

that will be four hundred more people.

That’s double the number of people.”

I try to imagine everyone at Southern Peaks

starting to speak Guernésiais.

This is not that easy to imagine.

But if anyone can make that happen,

it’s Lizard.

How to Say Hello on Our Dot

“Baonjour,” Lizard says to me.

“Baonjour,” I reply.

It sounds sort of like hello in French.

I know some French because my mother signed me up