The Linguist

I’m Finn Thye, a linguist with endangered languages, a poet, a mother of two little girls, a recovering addict and a Peer Support Specialist in mental health.

I trained with Rosetta Stone’s Endangered Language Program and the University of London while getting a master’s degree in Linguistics and Cognitive Science from University of Colorado at Boulder.

I have worked with Arapaho, Navajo, Inupiak and the Sac and Fox nation, and have spent the last 13 years learning to love the old ways on Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming with my adoptive family there.

I speak 7 languages: Arapaho, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, American Sign Language and English. I get bored watching television so I play Rosetta Stone instead, and now that I’m fairly old, all those languages have added up. Arapaho is my favorite language because its intricate orchestration of morphemes and precise phonological rules make it hard as fuck.

I am also a Peer Support Specialist in an Anxiety Intensive Outpatient Program, because I have dealt with intense mental health challenges my whole life, and folks with anxiety are bad-ass. I’m in active 12-step recovery from 20 years of using marijuana daily and I would emblazon the name and website of my group right smack here out of joy if I weren’t sworn to anonymity.