upsurge

[Mia Kalish]

Wow, this was truly a return to my childhood for me. I grew up in New
Hampshire, which is not too far south from Quebec. One of my uncle’s parents
were from there. But the real blast was mention of the Huron confederacy.
For some reason, the Hurons are woven into the tapestry of that time – my
childhood, that is. I don’t recall quite why, nor can I explain the joy that
surges, hearing that you met to rekindle the Huron Confederacy. 

 

Just thought I’d share . . .  :-) 

 

Mia  

 

  _____  

From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Richard Smith
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007 5:36 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] upsurge

 

Yes Kevin,
that was us meeting in the Midland Ontario area,for reburial/repatriation of
our ancestors
remains and to recognize and rekindle the old "Huron" Confederacy in 1999.
Some of us have close brother/sister ties with Wendats of Wendake,Quebec.
I visit Wendake every couple years to hold traditional pottery workshops and
discuss language 
efforts and compare our dialect similarities and differences.
Yes it's my understanding that the Wendat language borrows much from Wyandot
material
and  Mohawk Language is being used to fill in missing gaps by  
Michel GrosLouis who recently gained his Masters degree in Quebec in
Linguistics.
Eventually He will most likely be hired as a full time linguist for the
Wendat nation.
There is another Wendat woman preparing to get her masters in
linguistics,and already
ceremonies are restored in Wendake in a beautiful Longhouse.

Yes, our Wyandot language seems closer akin to what is known as "Seneca", 
an Iroquoian language of a group of mixed tribes removed from the Ohio
valley,
and yes Craig Kopris who i really respect (a differant linguist) is helping
a good deal
and does alot of study of the shared Iroquoian roots.  
It sounds like Lavel University will be helping too

"community driven study" at this point is probably not accurate to describe
us...
But definitely a "community excited to support" language recovery work!

Richard
Wyandotte Oklahoma



On 9/20/07 10:02 AM, "Kevin Brousseau" <brousseau_kevin at YAHOO.CA> wrote:

This is the first time I hear about work being done on Wyandot - this is a
community driven study? Are you trying to bring the language back to the
point of having fluent speakers once again? 
  
 
  
I'm very curious because as you probably know there is a Wyandot community
here in Quebec and a small diaspora of Wyandot people from the Ohio valley
who are scattered a little bit everywhere. A few years ago a meeting was
organized at Georgian bay I think it was called, where some Wyandot people
from a few different places met in order to discuss language revitalisation
and land claims I think. This was the first time I heard of Wyadot people
organizing in order to bring back their language, but I had been hearing
about the idea by some Wyadot friends of mine for a long time, who wish to
bring back the language and have been studying Mohawk in the mean time to
acquire competence in a closely related language, hoping it will help them
acquire Wyandot with the proper accent or pronunciation. Is your team
working with present Iroqiuan languages too for comparative purposes and are
you involved with the community in Quebec?
  
 
  
Kevin Brousseau
  
 
  


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



  

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