Linguist bringing dormant Indian language to life (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Published: 04.10.2004
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/accent/17419.php

Linguist bringing dormant Indian language to life
UA assistant professor has spent years working with tribe

By Gerald M. Gay
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
 
Natasha Warner has committed herself to bringing new life to a
once-dormant language.
 
For the past seven years, the assistant University of Arizona
linguistics professor has dedicated her time to the Mutsun tribe of
central coastal California - helping revive a dialect whose last fluent
speaker died in 1930.
 
"It's a rewarding thing to be able to try to give knowledge of
linguistics to help a community," said Warner, 34.
 
The Mutsun (pronounced MOOT-soon) tribe has historically lived in the
San Juan Bautista region of California. Today there are 700 enrolled
members of the tribe, with an estimated 2,000 descendants altogether.
 
An advocate for the language's return, Warner is not Mutsun herself. Her
interest in the language began when she was a graduate student at the
University of California-Berkeley.
 
While earning a doctorate in linguistics with a focus on Japanese, she
volunteered for the school-sponsored Breath of Life program - a
workshop that allowed indigenous tribes of the area access to the
university's extensive historical archives.
 
"It seemed like a good way to use what I had learned as a linguist to
try and be helpful," she said.
 
Working as a mentor with Mutsun representatives, Warner helped translate
texts that had been recorded by early tribe members and mission priests
in the area.
 
She became so involved with the work that she continued to assist the
tribe even after graduating and taking up a post-doctoral position in
the Netherlands.
 
Today, when Warner is not teaching phonetics and speech technology, she
and a small group of student volunteers spend their time working on all
aspects of Mutsun.
 
Their main goal: a complete and comprehensive English-to-Mutsun
dictionary.
 
And the group is well on its way, with more than 5,600 entries already
in place.
 
The linguist has even worked with tribe leaders, updating their
vocabulary to include terms not around when the language thrived.
 
A fluent Mutsun speaker, of which there are none yet, could now watch
"American Idol" on his or her ansYa-mehes (television) or send
ansYa-ennes (e-mail) over the Internet.
 
"The Mutsun community said they wanted to be able to use their language
for their modern-day life," she said. "So I helped them try and make up
new words in a way that's faithful to the way the language would have
done it."
 
She added: "We are getting patterns that existed in the original
language and, with those patterns, making a large number of new words."
 
Warner said that bringing back an entire language that has been dormant
for more than seven decades is a huge task. She has been working
hands-on with the Mutsun, attending workshops and visiting the
community as often as possible. Her group is also in the process of
compiling a learning textbook for tribe members.
 
One of the problems Warner said she has is that there are no audio
recordings of the language so it is almost impossible to know exactly
what the original language sounded like - she guesses it comes close to
Spanish or English, based on the similar sounds.
 
Still, she said, her group members do their best with what they have,
using the detailed information written in the historical documents of
the area.
 
She recalled a personal triumph she experienced last winter break on a
visit to the Mutsun community, where she, her assistant Lynnika Butler
and Quirina Luna-Costillas, head of the Mutsun revitalization movement,
made a small but important breakthrough.
 
"We were trying to work on getting to where we could speak the
language," Warner said. "By the end of the week, the three of us were
sitting around telling stories. There was a lot of hesitation and it
wasn't fluent, but at least we were doing it! It means we are really on
the brink of using the language productively."
 
Warner has dabbled in other language projects but has no plans to leave
the language she has grown to love.
 
"This isn't something you do for a little while and just stop," she
said. "This is the sort of project that tends to take up your whole
life."

° Contact reporter Gerald M. Gay at 573-4137 or ggay at azstarnet.com.