As a member living in the Zuni Pueblo I was taught to learn and speak my Zuni language. Yet, I have never noticed that many teens my age still can’t understand the language when someone speaks to them in Zuni. As we know, our language is very important for the people because the language is involved in songs for our religious dances, prayers. Also a lot of our elders are passing on and they taught our parents to continue the religious ways and to not forget what’s important in our culture. Next our parents are the ones who have to teach the ways of the Zuni culture which involves the culture.

There are some things that aren’t being done in both the community and in families. In the community there aren't any Zuni language classes outside of school which can cause problems. Also there are some times that the community talks to the public, sometimes in English than in Zuni. Family wise there are some families that just don’t teach their children the language at all, maybe because their own parents don’t know how to speak it as well. Although if the parents know how to speak the language there are times that the children don’t want to speak it. I know myself there are adults in Zuni that make fun of a younger person for mispronouncing a word or even getting mad at the person for accidentally mispronouncing a word. Also they are very hesitant in speaking it because they worry they might either say it wrong. This kind of "language bullying" leads to young people's hesitancy to speak in their Native tongue and is also a cause of language loss.

In both the community and family we must work together in teaching the younger generation speaking the A:shiwi language. This includes not getting upset if they mispronounce a word because it does take time to really develop correct pronunciation. We must do this because we are the next generation to keep our culture going, and we are the ones to pass down the language to our kids in the future so they can continue to learn and do our cultural things. Based on the BBC article by By Rachel Nuwer Languages: Why we must save dying tongues “Over the past century alone, around 400 languages, about one every three months, have gone extinct, and most linguists estimate that 50% of the world’s remaining 6,500 languages will be gone by the end of this century (some put that figure as high as 90%)”. We don’t want to be a part of the percentage because in the end we will end up losing who we are and we don’t want that to happen at all. So all the community and families here in Zuni must work together in order to protect our language as well as our culture.