Margaret Langdon

Margaret Langdon (died 2005) was a linguist who studied and documented many languages of the American Southwest and California, including Kumeyaay, Northern Diegueño (Ipai), Luiseño, and Yuman.

Langdon was born in Belgium and immigrated to the United States following World War II. She grew up speaking French and Flemish. Her doctoral thesis was a dictionary of the Mesa Grande dialect of Diegueño.

She taught at the University of California at San Diego from 1965 to 1991. Langdon worked with various tribal elders throughout her career on southwestern languages. She compiled the first dictionary of the Mesa Grande language. She was advisor to 17 graduate dissertations in linguistics, addressing such languages as Navajo, Palauan, Mojave, Havasupai, Seri, and others. Among her students at UCSD were linguists Pamela Munro, Leanne Hinton, Cheryl Hinton, Steve Elster, and Loni Langdon.

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