SYDNEY, Australia (Achieve3000, October 10, 2018). Alkhera means sky. Wrenya means wind. Rhela means people. You may not have heard these words as you go about your day. They're part of Pertame, an ancient language once spoken by Indigenous Australians. But Pertame is rarely heard today. In fact, it's one of many languages that are on the brink of extinction. Now, there's an effort to revive the critically endangered Pertame language by passing it on to young people.In the central Australian desert near the town of Alice Springs (population 25,000), only about 20 people know how to speak Pertame fluently. The days are long gone when the Pertame people, who lived along Australia's Finke River for tens of thousands of years, casually spoke the language while fishing, hunting, and gathering.We all speak our own languages every day. We couldn't get by without them. With so many people dependent on languages for survival, how can they begin to disappear?Like most Indigenous languages, Pertame started dying out after settlers from Britain arrived in Australia in the late 1700s. The colonists brought new diseases that devastated tribal populations and introduced new animals that wiped out the foods Indigenous peoples typically ate. They also settled on Indigenous land and made English the dominant language.Before the Europeans came to Australia, more than 250 languages were spoken among Indigenous tribes. Researchers estimate that only about half of these ancient languages still exist today. Even fewer are in regular use.All those languages didn't die out overnight. In the centuries after the European settlers arrived, English eventually became Australia's most widely used language, even among Indigenous peoples. This is partly because Europeans discouraged Australia's native groups from speaking their Indigenous languages in public.This widespread rejection of the native languages continued long after the settlers first arrived. Community leaders in the central Australian desert had experienced these attitudes first-hand. They say that for decades, their white teachers had forbidden them from speaking Pertame, but they spoke the language in secret, to help it survive.Kathleen Bradshaw, a tribal elder, recalls young Pertame speakers being shamed for speaking in their native tongue at school."This teacher walked past and said, 'Do not speak that lingo at school,'" Bradshaw said. But this didn't stop Bradshaw and her friends. "We promised ourselves that we would talk [in Pertame] in secret and just keep it going."Today, Bradshaw still wants to keep her language going. But she isn't sure that people outside of Indigenous communities know why this even matters. "I think a lot of non-Indigenous people…do not understand how important it is for [native groups] to have their language and to keep it strong," she said.But for Bradshaw and others, it's important to keep the languages alive. After all, Indigenous languages contain tribal knowledge, history, and customs. They've given Indigenous communities a valuable sense of identity.In Bradshaw's community, elders are determined to stop Pertame from dying out. And for them, it starts by educating the children. Young people are taught Pertame's ancient words with the hope that they will pass the language on to the next generation.Tribal leader Christobel Swan, one of the few fluent Pertame speakers, offers camps where children learn greetings and other words in the language. Swan has also helped to develop Pertame language learning resources. These include a smartphone app that teaches users the names for different birds in the Pertame language.Pertame may not be spoken as often as it once was along the banks of the Finke River. But thanks to elders like Swan, there's still a bit of hope for the future of the ancient language.