[Lexicog] Fw: language

[Jimm GoodTracks]

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From: Pat Benabe 
To: Jimm Goodtracks 
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 8:56 AM
Subject: language


http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=071126_1_A1_ahref1651
8

Tribal language fading away

by: SE RUCKMAN, World Staff Writer
11/26/2007 1:37 AM

Doris Jean Lamar is the last fluent speaker of the Wichita and Affiliated
Tribes.

ANADARKO -- Oklahoma had been a state for only two decades when Doris Jean
Lamar was born in 1927. Her first spoken words were not English, but an
American Indian language taught to her by grandparents.

Today, Lamar is the last fluent speaker in the Wichita and Affiliated
Tribes, a tribe of 2,300. Sitting in a tribal canteen that she supervises,
the 80-year-old Lamar carries a language that once was spoken by thousands,
then hundreds of Wichita language speakers.

"I never thought I would be in this position as a girl, to be our last
fluent speaker," she said.

Wichita is one of the languages classified as Caddoan, but is only similar
in stock to the Caddo language, scholars said. Lamar's tribe is one of a
handful indigenous to Oklahoma with a present-day jurisdiction in Caddo
County.

Lamar's journey was not unlike other girls in southwest Oklahoma in the
years right before the Great Depression. Her full-blood maternal
grandparents worked a farm and raised their grandchildren. She recalls
fewer cars, more thriftiness and no electricity back then. With a white
father and an Indian mother, Lamar stood out among her peers.

"I never thought of myself as white; to me, I was Wichita," she said. "The
old ladies of our tribe thought it was something to hear this little white
girl speak Wichita."

She eventually married a non-Indian and had children. After she divorced in
1959, she moved back among her Indian relatives near Gracemont. She
continued to speak Wichita as she did as a girl.

"Ever since I could remember, I spoke Wichita," she said. "My husband told
me that me speaking Indian was the only time he remembered I was Indian."

Around 1962, Lamar met an earnest young linguist who followed tribal
members in order to listen to them speak, she recalled. That young linguist
was David Rood from the University of Colorado.

Rood has been working with the Wichitas since he stumbled upon the Indian
language while looking for one that was not being preserved, he said. He
still works with Lamar and other tribal members. They race to record the
Wichita language so that a dictionary can be gleaned. They have spent hours
going over Wichita words and compiling language CDs on creation stories,
verbs, nouns and names.

Defining tribal fluency can be tricky, Rood said. In small tribes, debates
exist over who qualifies as a fluent speaker. Lamar speaks some Wichita
with another tribal member who labors with the language.

"She tells me there are so many words in her head that she can't get out,
she gets frustrated," Lamar said.

Speaking and writing the language are key. Sometimes tribal members know
ceremonial songs by heart. Yet linguists think fluency is more complicated
than that.

"I would say when somebody is able to speak the language in a way that has
never been spoken before or ever written in a language book . . . as an
abstract thought, then that is fluency," Rood said.

The linguist tried to organize a conversation among the last few fluent
Wichita speakers in the early 2000s, he said. He regards the exercise as a
half-success. But the gathering was stilted because of political
differences among the speakers.

"Which is typical in almost all Indian tribes," he said of tribal political
factions. "They spoke a little, but not much."

Hope exists for the Wichitas' dying language. An immersion class for
children has been soldiering forward, as is an adult-oriented language
class, both subsidized by fed eral grants.

But the Wichitas must cross another obstacle of language revitalization:
retention. Sam Still, a Cherokee speaker, said retention among adults and
children remains low if the language is not already spoken in the home.

"For children, when they have no one at home to speak the language with,
there is no one to practice the sounds with and they lose it," Still said.
"When you're around the language, you learn it better."

Meanwhile, Lamar fishes a small recorder out of her pocket and turns it on.
She speaks English words first, then the Wichita word follows.

"I have been doing this a lot, lately," she said, pressing play. "I just
put whatever words pop into my head."

The tribal elder is aware that her language hangs on the precipice. She
remembers the time when everyone around her spoke Wichita. Now, none of her
children speak more than a few words, she said.

"They live in the white world," she said. "I don't."

S.E. Ruckman 581-8462
se.ruckman at tulsaworld.com

*****

Fluent, but for how long?

Indian languages with fewer than five fluent speakers:

Chirachua Apache
Osage
Otoe
Ottawa
Plains Apache
Quapaw
Wichita

Indian languages with zero remaining fluent speakers:

Alabama
Cayuga
Delaware (Lenape)
Hitchiti, Mikasuki
Kaw (Kansa)
Kitsai
Koasati
Mesquakie (Fox)
Miami, Peoria
Modoc
Natchez
Seneca
Tonkawa
Wyandotte
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