Siraya update

[Heather Souter]

Kihchi-maarsii!  Thanks a lot!

This is all very interesting to me but not surprising at all....  One just
has to think of India or Europe or Africa (or many other areas) to find
multilingual communities/peoples.  I guess when I think of Metis people, I
am stuck by the fact that it could be argued that multilingualism actually
an intrinsic part of our culture--without the mixing of the cultures of
peoples who traditionally spoke different languages we would not have come
into being....  I think that this may be (?) unique in the North American
context, although not elsewhere....

Nawach taar....
Heather

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 5:31 PM, James Crippen <jcrippen at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:20, William J Poser <wjposer at ldc.upenn.edu>
> wrote:
> > Heather,
> >
> > I think that multilingualism was actually rather common in early times
> > in North America. Here in BC, for example, the Ulkatcho Carrier were
> > until recently bilingual in Nuxalk (Bella Coola). There is still a
> > large joint use area. Many Ulkatcho people can still speak or understand
> > Chilcotin even now. (The reason that Ulkatcho people are no longer
> > bilingual in Nuxalk is that hardly anybody speaks Nuxalk anymore.)
> >
> > Similarly, speakers of Carrier proper from the Northwest end of
> > Stuart Lake also speak Babine, the neighboring language.
>
> Despite being a very large and powerful society, meaning that they
> would expect their neighbors to learn their language and not the other
> way around, Tlingit people historically were very often fluent in a
> number of languages. I have one friend whose grandparents were
> bilingual in Tlingit and Tahltan, and who spoke Alaskan Haida, Coast
> Tsimshian, and Chinook Jargon in addition. Many Tahltan people up the
> Stikine River were bilingual in Tlingit because of intermarriage with
> Tlingit clans from Wrangell.
>
> Up until the early 20th century many if not most Tlingit people on the
> northern end of the territory around Yakutat were bilingual in Eyak,
> Southern Tutchone, or Ahtna, depending on their clan's history. The
> Inland Tlingit who live around Carcross in the Yukon were
> traditionally bilingual in Tagish, and indeed at some point there were
> probably no monolingual speakers of Tagish because the group ended up
> completely merged with the Inland Tlingit people, just like what
> nearly happened to the Eyak.
>
> There was also a sizable population of Tlingit people who moved down
> to Victoria in British Columbia during the late 19th century, and
> these people maintained bilingualism in Tlingit along with whichever
> Salishan or Wakashan language was spoken by the families they married
> into. Tlingit was prestigious, even though there weren't many people
> to speak it to. George Hunt was a famous exemplar, being bilingual in
> Tlingit and Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl), who went on to be an interpreter
> for Franz Boas.
>
> The Tlingit have a huge, relatively empty territory in comparison to
> some parts of North America, but despite this multilingualism was
> common. In areas where the languages are packed together like sardines
> in a can, such as on the coasts of Oregon, Washington and southern
> British Columbia, it's inconceivable that people *didn't* know the
> language of their neighbors who lived a half-day's hike or paddle over
> in the next valley.
>
> In the far north of Alaska, basically any Athabaskan community whose
> territory bounded that of the Inupiat and Yupik people would have at
> least a few people in the village who were bilingual. And many
> Athabaskan groups were known for having bilinguals who spoke a
> neighboring Athabaskan language as well. People would intentionally
> raise bilingual children because they could become interpreters in
> trade negotiations, and hence become more affluent and powerful in the
> community.
>
> Phil Cash Cash himself has talked about the multilingualism of
> ceremonies among the Nez Perce people, where they speak Cayuse,
> Sahaptin, Nez Perce, and English all in a highly structured format.
>
> So I would go farther than Bill Poser's statement and assert that
> multilingualism was the norm in much (most?) of North America before
> colonization. It still is the norm in some places, although now the
> outside language for bilinguals is often English, French, or Spanish
> rather than the language of some neighboring group.
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
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