Nancy Currier Dorian, professor emeritus of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, an esteemed linguist, passed away suddenly and peacefully on April 24 in Brunswick. She left behind a remarkable legacy in the field of language preservation. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1936, she dedicated over four decades to teaching German and Gaelic, and, starting in 1963, researching the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic, particularly in the villages of Bora, Golspie, and Embo, which led to later renown in this field.
Her academic journey began with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from Connecticut College, followed by a Master of Arts and doctorate, both in linguistics, from the University of Michigan. Her scholarly career was mostly spent at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, but she also had done some teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Kiel in Germany.
She gravitated to Gaelic when she encountered it while doing field work for the Linguistic Survey of Scotland in 1963. This sparked a lifelong passion for studying language variation and decline. Her 1981 book, “Language Death: The Lifecycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect,” remains a foundational text in the study of endangered languages.
Her legacy in linguistics lives on in additional works of hers, which continue to inspire the study of endangered languages. These pioneering efforts led to numerous awards, among them the Kenneth Hale Award from the Linguistics Society of America in 2012 and an honorary degree from Glasgow University in Celtic studies in 2015. A further acknowledgement of her expertise, she was interviewed by BBC Alba TV in 2009 in Harpswell about her Gaelic studies and has a Wikipedia entry on her linguistics career.
Besides teaching German and Gaelic to students at Bryn Mawr, Nancy was a professor of linguistics with joint appointments in the Department of German and the Department of Anthropology from 1965-1989. She afterward continued her research by talking with her Sutherland Gaelic speakers by phone and publishing papers and books, even after she was no longer in the classroom, her latest book publication being in 2014. This dedication reflects on her love of her Sutherland community and all languages, of which she spoke several, even learning modern Greek as a teenager for the delight of it.
She had a brilliant mind and a knack for creative writing that showed her humor, as a teenager writing her versions of Sherlock Holmes stories that got published in The Baker Street Journal, plus writing poetry and music. She was a strong supporter of her Unitarian Universalist church, even contributing a hymn that is now in their hymnal, “Dear Weaver of Our Life’s Design.” Another manifestation of her broad intellectual scope was her support of women’s and Native Americans’ rights, and her love of nature shown in her cataloging of the activities of animals around her house.
Her Harpswell home was a beacon for summer visitors from many parts of the U.S. and from abroad, both personal and academic. She often gathered family, friends and visitors in singalongs of her collection of popular rounds, ballads and folk music, as well as some of her own compositions.
She is survived by first cousins Ann Standridge, Katherine Goodrich, and Dr. Ewen McEwen, and their families.
A memorial for Nancy will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brunswick on June 15 at 10 a.m. with the Rev. Kharma Amos officiating. The service will be streamed via the church’s website at uubrunswick.org. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Maine People’s Alliance, Harpswell Heritage Land Trust, or a charity of your choice.
