upsurge

[Susan Penfield]

All,
I'm very heartened by this discussion and grateful to everyone who is
participating. I found that Natasha's contribution gave a lot
of depth to the role that linguists play and to the importance of community
involvement at ALL stages of the process of unraveling
to most workable versions of particularly 'dormant' languages. It is not an
easy task for anyone -- community members or linguists-- who have the
central community goals at heart.

Just want to add that in terms of all the recent news about endangered
languages -- we need all the coverage we can get so it is GREAT that the
word is being spread through larger media sources. I've been especially and
pleasantly suprised that many of my friends -- who are NOT linguists or
language activists -- and not on this or other language-based lists --
writing to me about all of this and wanting to know more....

There is still so much to do in so little time -- but we all gain
encouragement when we hear stories and successes from others.
Thanks to all contributors....

Susan




On 9/19/07, Richard Smith <rzs at tds.net> wrote:
>
> thanks Bill,
> good points to consider...our linguists haven't had the honor
> to sit with fluent speakers...though they could listen to the various
> longhouse speeches on recordings for helpful hints
>
> Aidan was pretty much right on target.
>
> Wyandotte  or wandat is one of those languages said to be extinct.
> well ....    i never liked that word- "extinct"
> We have a mass of material left by ethnologists,linguists and even
> speakers
> - a huge dictionary and MANY lists,over forty narratives,incredible
> stories
> written in Wandat, including recordings of spoken words,over 300 songs and
> part of a story ,all originally collected on wax cylinders.
> This was collected here in 1911 by good ol' french canadian Marius
> Barbeau.
> Barbeau wasn't educated in Iroquoian morphology ...he simply recorded
> what he heard often running words together or dividing them in funny
> places.
> But actually,He was complimented by Wyandottes in this area for his good
> pronunciation,though teased for his rather feminine voice.
> As we have no other record of any outsider given this compliment,
> we tend to trust his phonetic chart as a pretty good standard,
> and it actually lines up with specific voiced word examples recorded.
> We also have a good recording of a Green Corn speech by a Wyandot
> from this area,though it's spoken in what's referred to as "Seneca".
>
> I don't want to discredit what our linguist has contributed !
> He is an unpaid hard worker who mostly works in isolation in a distant
> state. Unraveling patterns of the morphology is a huge success and we're
> all
> very grateful.
> However phoneticly ,he teaches adults a "simplified" pronunciation.
> one example:
> On his own,He decided to represent EVERY o written as a nasal ö.
> but not the original nasal ö as in french "bon" as Barbeau heard,
> and as i hear it spoken in longhouse speeches.
> He teaches ö as in "known"
> which to me is the same o as in "bone"
> I hear "bone" and "bon" as two differant "o" sounds
> both important to keep distinct.
>
> another example:
> -Barbeau indicates-nasal ä as in the french "marchand"
> our linguist now teaches ä as in "none"
> ....huh?
> but he also decided to drop most of the nasal "ä" anyway
> in his own translation work he reduces them to a simple "a"
> as in "father"       well?...can they do that and still publish?
>
> It's made me realize we need a team of Wyandotte tribal members to
> form a group who can make important decisions so that linguist work is
> evaluated, proposals made and decisions can be agreed upon
> if he is to have the nations endorsement.
> Then  he can truthfully write in his upcoming book,
> "the present Wyandotte Community prefers..."
>
> am i just being fussy?
>
> Richard
> Wyandotte Oklahoma
>



-- 
____________________________________________________________
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language
and Literacy (CERCLL)
Department of English (Primary)
American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)
Second Language Acquisition & Teaching Ph.D. Program (SLAT)
Department of Language,Reading and Culture
Department of Linguistics
The Southwest Center (Research)
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836


"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought,
an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

                                                          Wade Davis...(on a
Starbucks cup...)
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