Native tongue

[Jordan Lachler]

I think Matthew is right on with his post.  But I also think there's a
potential danger with using too many loanwords (or even nativized
loanwords) in a given semantic domain...

While Israeli auto mechanics could get away with using large numbers of
English loanwords during their daily discussions, I think this would be
less successful for Native American auto mechanics, because the natural
question would be: "If so many of the words in this conversation have to be
borrowed from English, why don't we just have this conversation in English
to begin with and save ourselves the bother?"

While borrowing a couple of terms in a given semantic domain poses little
problem -- and, as Matthew said, is actually a good thing, since it helps
to spread the use of the language into new areas -- borrowing too many of
them can have the effect of reinforcing how "restricted" or "unmodern" the
Native language is, since everyone can recognize the English loanwords for
what they are.

So, as Matthew also said, coming up with Native words from Native roots to
describe new vocabulary items is usually your best bet, even though this is
often not an easy task.  Another option -- although I haven't seen it
happen very much -- is to borrow from some language other than English (or
French or Spanish, etc...).  So, for example, if you were looking to coin a
term for, let's say, "airplane", instead of borrowing the English term and
making it fit  the Native pronunciation, you could borrow the Navajo word
or the Lakhota word.  Sure, it's still an artifical solution, but at least
doing it this way helps keep English from encroaching any further into the
language.

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Jordan Lachler
Sealaska Heritage Institute