How a 17th Century Bible is Helping to Revive a Native-American Language (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

How a 17th Century Bible is Helping to Revive a Native-American Language
by Mark Hay
​, ​
September 16, 2014​

Four hundred years ago, before the Pilgrims washed up on Plymouth in 1620,
the Massachusetts coast was home to at least 12,000 Native Americans united
by a common language: Wômpanâak. Also known as Wampanoag, Natic, or
Pokanoket, Wômpanâak was one of the Massachusett languages that gave the
modern state its name. It was the language of Massasoit and Tisquantum;
traces of it are still found in English, with words like skunk (squnck) and
squash (askosquash). While Wômpanâak should rightfully be enshrined as a
major touchstone of early American culture and history, instead, it was a
language put under assault. Between smallpox, endemic warfare and
enslavement, flight to other Native American tribes, and centuries of
forced Christianization and European assimilation in New England’s infamous
praying towns, by the close of the 18th century there were only a few
hundred Wômpanâak speakers left. By 1833, the language was dead. Until, 160
years later, it suddenly wasn’t dead anymore.

Today, after regaining their tribal identity in 1928, there are 2,000
Wômpanâak in southern Massachusetts. And one of them, Jessie Little Doe
Baird, has found a way to bring their language back to life.
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Access full article below:

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http://magazine.good.is/articles/saving-the-wompanaak-language
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