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Native American Literature | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Belsk Newbie United States Joined 4864 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 7 21 March 2011 at 5:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I am interesting in learning a Native American language mostly from the point of view of being able to read material that was written by Native Americans before and during colonization. I'm not really sure how prolific written literature was versus oral storytelling and what if anything has survived to the present day. Are there any languages which have a deep literary history and collection or perhaps an oral history that has been transcribed? Edited by Belsk on 21 March 2011 at 5:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5748 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 2 of 7 21 March 2011 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Belsk,
I believe you are unlikely to find much in the way of recorded pre-contact North American native written material. There was quite a bit of work done in the 19th century by missionaries following European contact developing written systems (often abugidas) for existing aboriginal languages, which largely had a mostly oral tradition to that point in history. I have only a superficial understanding here, mostly based from a Canadian perspective, so there may be more to this. Edited by Spanky on 21 March 2011 at 7:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5064 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 3 of 7 22 March 2011 at 4:23am | IP Logged | ||
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This might be what you're looking for http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0859891.html
Its very unfourtunate that Literature from the North America natives in a native script is non existent : ( Edited by CaucusWolf on 22 March 2011 at 4:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Belsk Newbie United States Joined 4864 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 7 22 March 2011 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks to both of you for your responses. That is truly unfortunate, but doing more research I have found a few interesting possibilities. As Spanky said there seems to be a number of adapted writing system after contact with Europeans, some of which use the Latin alphabet and at least one other (Cherokee), although probably more, that uses a unique alphabet. To what extent to oral tradition of any given language or tribe has been recorded is still unclear to me and will require some more research to see. On another related note I just realized that my academic adviser does work with local Native American languages translating documents. Hopeful I might be able to get some recommendations and information.
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| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5748 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 5 of 7 22 March 2011 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is a fascinating area if you continue to be interested. You may be interested in
checking out the written systems developed for Cree and Inuktituk, as well as the history of the early missionaries/amateur linguists in developing the systems and interacting in what was a wild new horizon for language exploration for Europeans in the post-contact period. The issue you raise of the recording of previous oral tradition is a current legal issue in Canada, as a number of current and recent Aboriginal rights and title cases are based in large part on attempting to re-establish aboriginal customs and practices at and prior to first European contact: in part this is sought to be established through some of the early European documents (diaries of the explorers, traders, early government officials, and also early trading logs of companies like the Hudson Bay Company), but in large part through efforts to admit into court oral tradition evidence - current versions of past oral traditions, oral history and story-telling that is alleged to be reliable because of the importance different First Nations may have placed on accuracy in story-telling. Edited by Spanky on 22 March 2011 at 5:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wakablogger Newbie United States livinglanguages.word Joined 4787 days ago 1 posts - 2 votes | Message 6 of 7 23 March 2011 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||
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There isn't a lot of writing before the Europeans arrived, but see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script for
one example in Mesoamerica. To give two examples of post-contact written languages in the United States, the Cherokees and Hawaiians both had newspapers at one time, and my recollection is that their literacy rates in the nineteenth century exceeded 90 percent. Recently, Cherokee became famous for its iPhone app and Hawaiian because two native speakers of Hawaiian just graduated with PhDs in Hawaiian studies. Many, many NA languages have written materials. On my bookshelf, I have _Lushootseed Texts: An Introduction to Puget Salish Narrative Aesthetics_ edited by Crisca Bierwert. It is a side-by-side translation in English and Lushootseed--a dream book. There is also a Lushootseed dictionary available--I think Vi Hilbert was one of the authors/editors. IMHO, the Pimsleur method is best for learning languages. The only NA language I see on their list (http://www.pimsleur.com/List-of-Languages) is Ojibwe, though they told me that they have other tribes interested. You can rent their CDs through the mail or purchase the courses outright. I try to provide resources on endangered languages on my blog as well, though there is so much happening, I can only post a fraction of the news. HTH Wakablogger http://livinglanguages.wordpress.com 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4922 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 7 23 March 2011 at 5:26am | IP Logged | ||
I found a forum not so long ago where someone transcribed each Pimsleur Ojibwe lesson, then provided his own grammar and cultural notes with each lesson. I'm currently going through them. I don't have access to the audio and I'm unwilling to spend the money on the course right now, but probably will spring for it later. It's not really part of my goal for this year, but I'm doing it at a pretty relaxed pace, so it's not getting in the way of my other language goals. It's a good course, and quickly gets you into how the language is constructed and useed. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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