Margaret Langdon was a linguist who studied and documented many languages of the American Southwest and California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, including Kumeyaay

Kumeyaay

The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai, Kamia, or formerly Diegueño, are Native American people of the extreme southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. They live in the states of California in the US and Baja California in Mexico. In Spanish, the name is commonly spelled...

, Northern Diegueño (Ipai), and Luiseño

Luiseño language

The Luiseño language is an Uto-Aztecan language of California spoken by the Luiseño, a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County,...

.

Langdon was born in Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 and immigrated to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 following World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. She grew up speaking French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and Flemish. Her doctoral thesis was a dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

 of the Mesa Grande

Mesa Grande

Mesa Grande ruins, in Mesa, Arizona, preserves a group of Hohokam structures constructed during the classical period. The ruins were occupied between AD 1100 and 1400 and were a product of the Hohokam civilization that inhabited the Salt River Valley. There the Hohokam constructed an extensive...

 dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

 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

Navajo language

Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestern United States. It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages .Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the...

, Palauan

Palauan language

Palauan is one of the two nationally recognized official languages spoken in the Republic of Palau...

, Mojave

Mojave language

Mojave is the native language of the Mohave people along the Colorado River in eastern California, northwestern Arizona, and southwestern Nevada...

, Havasupai

Havasupai language

Havasupai is a dialect of the Upland Yuman language spoken by fewer than 450 people on the Havasupai Indian Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon...

, Seri

Seri language

Seri is a language isolate spoken by the Seri people by between 716 and 900 people in two villages on the coast of Sonora, Mexico.-Classification:...

, and others. Among her students at UCSD were linguists Pamela Munro

Pamela Munro

Pamela Munro is an American linguist who specializes in Native American languages. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, her graduate adviser was Margaret Langdon. She teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles...

, Leanne Hinton

Leanne Hinton

Leanne Hinton is an emerita professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. She specializes in American Indian languages, sociolinguistics, and language revitalization...

, Cheryl Hinton, Steve Elster, and Loni Langdon.