Pidgins and Creoles
I just finished reading a book titled Bastard Tongues by Derek Bickerton. In it, he explores the origin of pidgin and Creole languages around the world, specifically in Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, and Hawai’i. His theory, not unlike what Chomsky postulates, is that children are born with a “bioprogram” that allows them to create Creoles out of pidgin tongues, filling in missing aspects of grammar by similar methods used worldwide regardless of the substrate language or languages influencing the pidgin. He states, for instance, that most Creole languages have subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, like English.
Bickerton unfortunately does not, however, take into consideration Native North American so-called pidgins, such as those that have been traditionally called Mobilian (Trade) Jargon or Choctaw-Chickasaw Trade Jargon (once spoken in the Southeast and Mississippi Valley) and Chinook Jargon (once spoken in the Northwest). Mobilian in fact has an OsV word order (small ‘s’ indicating that the subject is optional and often not employed). Thus:
ete (eno) cãle.
wood (1S) cut
I cut the wood.
While many linguists and others have postulated that, what I now like to refer to as the Mobilian International Language (MIL)1, came about only after European contact, I agree with Drechsel (1997) who postulates that this “pidgin” language shows far more ancient origins. For one thing, the OsV word order is unknown to any of the modern languages of the Southeast, including Choctaw and Chickasaw (SOV), from which MIL is supposed to have arisen, and it certainly does not display the SVO word order that is common to all the European contact languages (Spanish, French, English). This OsV word order is, however, the word order of Proto-Muskogean. There is also the fact that, despite later contact with Spanish, French, and English, few words from these European languages entered MIL's vocabulary. Thus, I believe these facts point to MIL's roots going back long before European contact and probably having been used by various southeastern and Mississippian nations as a common trade language for centuries, along with Native American sign language.
While most pidgins and Creoles have come about through contact of indigenous languages with European colonial languages, I think it’s important to realize that not all of them have. In fact, Bickerton himself talks about Pidgin Hawaiian, not Pidgin English, having been in use in Hawai’i well before Pidgin English came about. This was because Hawai’i was already a long established progressive monarchy when Europeans and others first began arriving, and, well, if these immigrants wanted to communicate with Hawaiians, they needed to learn to communicate in Hawaiian the best they could. (Hawaiians, being in the dominant position at the time, were not about to learn English, Portuguese, Tagalog, or Japanese to communicate with these newcomers.) The result of this, before the American overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, was Pidgin Hawaiian, which looked something like this:
(Bickerton 2008: 211)
Wau no ku’ai kela kapiki. (Pidgin Hawaiian)
I NEG buy that cabbage.
A’ole au e ku’ai aku i kela kapiki. (Bickerton)2
’A’ole au e kū’ai aku i kēlā kāpiki. (Hawaiian)
NEG 1S sell that cabbage.
I won’t sell the cabbage.
Note that the positive sentence pattern in Hawaiian would be: Kū’ai aku au i kēlā kāpiki, "sell 1S that cabbage," which is VSO. (Negative sentence structure in Hawaiian mandates changing its usual VSO word order.) But note that the Pidgin form is SVO, in line with Bickerton’s contention.
NOTES:
1. I find this a far better name than Mobilian (Trade) Jargon, for it expresses what Mobilian actually was, an "international" language used among many southeastern Nations, including the Biloxis, as a mode of communication for trade, joint ceremonial rituals, and politics in the context of intertribal regional alliances. It is important to note that, while most pidgins have negative connotations and are not highly regarded, the opposite was true of MIL. Southeastern nations had no negative attitude about using the pidgin, and, in fact, it is believed they often used the language among themselves in order to confuse or hinder communication with encroaching Europeans, who often thought MIL was actually Choctaw, Chickasaw, or some other language.
2. Why Bickerton or his editors did not employ the crucial macrons of Hawaiian orthography is a mystery to me, especially since he has lived and taught in Hawai'i and is writing about Hawaiian pidgin languages. Thus, I have included the macrons as they should appear underneath the macronless transcription appearing in his book.
References:
Bickerton, Derek. 2008. Bastard tongues: a trailblazing linguist finds clues to our common humanity in the world's lowliest languages. New York: Hill and Wang.
Drechsel, Emanuel. 1997. Mobilian Jargon: linguistic and sociohistorical aspects of a Native American pidgin. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Saturday, December 29, 2007
"These languages ... were just sleeping"
The following is a condensed version of an article that recently appeared in the San José Mercury News. I was briefly involved with this project for a few months before I left California to pursue my doctorate in Kansas. I transcribed about 50 pages (a mere drop in a very large bucket) worth of Rumsen Ohlone notes that Harrington had gathered back in the 1930s. This is how my interest in the Ohlone languages, native languages of central coastal California, came to be. Thankfully the microfiche version of Harrington's notes are accessible here at KU, and I continue working with the notes when brief bouts of spare time permit. I'm hoping to get three Rumsen stories published in the Journal of Folklore Research in the near future, which, to the best of my knowledge, would be the first time that the actual tales will have been published in the Rumsen language as well as with English translations.
Here is the article:
Bringing voices from the grave, volunteers at the University of California-Davis are working to decipher nearly a million pages of notes from conversations with long-gone Native Californians, reviving more than 100 languages from the distant past. Word by word, they type the scribbled and cryptic notes left by John Peabody Harrington, an eccentric and tireless linguist who in the early 1900s traveled throughout California interviewing the last surviving speakers of many native tongues, including the local Muwekma Ohlone tribe. Their effort to organize a database of Harrington's vast material will build a Rosetta Stone for these languages and their dialects, creating dictionaries of words, phrases and tribal tales and customs that were destined to disappear.
"It is an enormous amount, and it is incredibly difficult to read," said Martha Macri, director of the UC-Davis Native American Language Center and co-director of the effort to computerize Harrington's papers.
"He was totally obsessive. We've become a bit obsessive ourselves."
San Jose native Margaret Cayward is using his notes to study native music as part of her doctoral thesis at UC-Davis. "It's helping us rediscover old knowledge and values in the music," she said. "Music was a major part of life for Californians, with ritual or sacred significance."
In Fremont, descendants of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe used his notes to create Chochenyo flash cards, puzzles and bingo games for their children. In Macri's office, eight large file cabinets are filled with 182 reels of microfilmed images of Harrington's work, copied from his original papers that are stored at the Smithsonian Institution's warehouse in Silver Hill, Md. Each reel, costing $1,000, contains 500 to 2,000 pages of material. Seven years into the Harrington project, funded by the National Science Foundation, it is about two-thirds complete.
"They have changed my life," said Linda Yamane of Seaside, who based her book of Ohlone tales, called "The Snake That Lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains," on his notes. "Along with a lot of hard work and perseverance, they've made it possible to bring back my Rumsien (Monterey area) Ohlone language and other cultural traditions from the brink of extinction."
Hired in 1915 by the Smithsonian Institution, Harrington spent four decades wandering California with unbounded freedom to document languages before they disappeared. It was a time when Native Californians faced fierce discrimination. Few elders spoke the languages to children, so little information was passed on for future generations.
"They trusted him," said Bev Ortiz, an anthropologist at California State University-East Bay. "The tribal elders had the wisdom and courage to see that the time would come when it would not be bad to be an Indian - and the language would be there for their descendants."
Harrington traveled by car and on foot to find surviving speakers, collecting maps, photographs, and plant and animal specimens along the way. One camping trip, on horseback, took him through the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains. Gifted in phonetics and lexicography, "he spent more of his waking hours, week in and week out, transcribing Indian languages than doing any other conscious thing," said Victor Golla of Humboldt State University. "No linguist, before or since, ever spent so much time engaged in the field collection of primary data." Yet Harrington published little of his work. Although he sent back reports to the Smithsonian, many of his notes seem to have been deliberately hidden from colleagues.
After his death in 1961, as Smithsonian curators began cataloging his papers, they discovered stockpiles of boxes stored in warehouses, garages and even chicken coops throughout the West. Six tons of material - among them Indian-made flutes, Kachina dolls, dead birds and tarantulas, baskets, rocks, empty soup cans, half-eaten sandwiches, dirty laundry and two shrunken heads from the Amazon - eventually arrived at the Smithsonian, filling two warehouses. His translations of native words are littered with puzzling abbreviations. And his notations do not represent a standardized phonology, just impressionistic phonetics. Also troubling is his practice of shifting, over the years, the symbols used when transcribing sounds into words. The bilingual Harrington wrote many translations in old California Spanish, with idiosyncratic spelling. And much of his material is disorganized, with notes about one language interspersed with those of another.
"There was a method in his madness. He was trying to get as much down as fast as could," Klar said. "But reading it takes endless patience."
Despite the frustrations, the Harrington project team says its efforts are slowly shedding light on a long-lost way of life - and educating a proud new generation of Native Californians about the ways of their ancestors.
"We're learning not only about the languages, but day-to-day life - the culture and customs, the politics. A language is a universe; it's family, society, religious practices. When you start pulling it out, you start to understand."
"These languages never died," she said. "They were just sleeping."
The following is a condensed version of an article that recently appeared in the San José Mercury News. I was briefly involved with this project for a few months before I left California to pursue my doctorate in Kansas. I transcribed about 50 pages (a mere drop in a very large bucket) worth of Rumsen Ohlone notes that Harrington had gathered back in the 1930s. This is how my interest in the Ohlone languages, native languages of central coastal California, came to be. Thankfully the microfiche version of Harrington's notes are accessible here at KU, and I continue working with the notes when brief bouts of spare time permit. I'm hoping to get three Rumsen stories published in the Journal of Folklore Research in the near future, which, to the best of my knowledge, would be the first time that the actual tales will have been published in the Rumsen language as well as with English translations.
Here is the article:
Bringing voices from the grave, volunteers at the University of California-Davis are working to decipher nearly a million pages of notes from conversations with long-gone Native Californians, reviving more than 100 languages from the distant past. Word by word, they type the scribbled and cryptic notes left by John Peabody Harrington, an eccentric and tireless linguist who in the early 1900s traveled throughout California interviewing the last surviving speakers of many native tongues, including the local Muwekma Ohlone tribe. Their effort to organize a database of Harrington's vast material will build a Rosetta Stone for these languages and their dialects, creating dictionaries of words, phrases and tribal tales and customs that were destined to disappear.
"It is an enormous amount, and it is incredibly difficult to read," said Martha Macri, director of the UC-Davis Native American Language Center and co-director of the effort to computerize Harrington's papers.
"He was totally obsessive. We've become a bit obsessive ourselves."
San Jose native Margaret Cayward is using his notes to study native music as part of her doctoral thesis at UC-Davis. "It's helping us rediscover old knowledge and values in the music," she said. "Music was a major part of life for Californians, with ritual or sacred significance."
In Fremont, descendants of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe used his notes to create Chochenyo flash cards, puzzles and bingo games for their children. In Macri's office, eight large file cabinets are filled with 182 reels of microfilmed images of Harrington's work, copied from his original papers that are stored at the Smithsonian Institution's warehouse in Silver Hill, Md. Each reel, costing $1,000, contains 500 to 2,000 pages of material. Seven years into the Harrington project, funded by the National Science Foundation, it is about two-thirds complete.
"They have changed my life," said Linda Yamane of Seaside, who based her book of Ohlone tales, called "The Snake That Lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains," on his notes. "Along with a lot of hard work and perseverance, they've made it possible to bring back my Rumsien (Monterey area) Ohlone language and other cultural traditions from the brink of extinction."
Hired in 1915 by the Smithsonian Institution, Harrington spent four decades wandering California with unbounded freedom to document languages before they disappeared. It was a time when Native Californians faced fierce discrimination. Few elders spoke the languages to children, so little information was passed on for future generations.
"They trusted him," said Bev Ortiz, an anthropologist at California State University-East Bay. "The tribal elders had the wisdom and courage to see that the time would come when it would not be bad to be an Indian - and the language would be there for their descendants."
Harrington traveled by car and on foot to find surviving speakers, collecting maps, photographs, and plant and animal specimens along the way. One camping trip, on horseback, took him through the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains. Gifted in phonetics and lexicography, "he spent more of his waking hours, week in and week out, transcribing Indian languages than doing any other conscious thing," said Victor Golla of Humboldt State University. "No linguist, before or since, ever spent so much time engaged in the field collection of primary data." Yet Harrington published little of his work. Although he sent back reports to the Smithsonian, many of his notes seem to have been deliberately hidden from colleagues.
After his death in 1961, as Smithsonian curators began cataloging his papers, they discovered stockpiles of boxes stored in warehouses, garages and even chicken coops throughout the West. Six tons of material - among them Indian-made flutes, Kachina dolls, dead birds and tarantulas, baskets, rocks, empty soup cans, half-eaten sandwiches, dirty laundry and two shrunken heads from the Amazon - eventually arrived at the Smithsonian, filling two warehouses. His translations of native words are littered with puzzling abbreviations. And his notations do not represent a standardized phonology, just impressionistic phonetics. Also troubling is his practice of shifting, over the years, the symbols used when transcribing sounds into words. The bilingual Harrington wrote many translations in old California Spanish, with idiosyncratic spelling. And much of his material is disorganized, with notes about one language interspersed with those of another.
"There was a method in his madness. He was trying to get as much down as fast as could," Klar said. "But reading it takes endless patience."
Despite the frustrations, the Harrington project team says its efforts are slowly shedding light on a long-lost way of life - and educating a proud new generation of Native Californians about the ways of their ancestors.
"We're learning not only about the languages, but day-to-day life - the culture and customs, the politics. A language is a universe; it's family, society, religious practices. When you start pulling it out, you start to understand."
"These languages never died," she said. "They were just sleeping."
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Culture, anthropology, and what it means to be human
OK, I realize it has been far too long since my last blog entry, but the constant demands of grad school sort of made this, along with many other things, lesser priority. The crazy semester is now over, thank goodness. Now the wait to see how I did on finals and term papers and what my ultimate grades are.
One of my planned winter break activities is to catch up on some non-course-related reading. One of these readings is by a KU professor, Robert Minor, titled, Scared Straight. The subtitle is: "Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People And Why It’s So Hard to Be Human." I’ve only just started it, but I’m already enthralled with his writing and teaching about why LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender) people are so feared in our culture that there is an average of one gay man killed every two weeks in America just for being gay. Minor states: "I still see a nation obsessed with maintaining gender roles … I see men’s groups struggling to know why they exist and where to go next. I see therapists who are still trying to help people cope with a system that is profit-oriented and coping-oriented, not human-oriented or healing oriented" (Minor 2001: 4).
In his own words, Minor’s purpose for writing this book is to argue "that none of us, regardless of sexual orientation, will be able to live as human beings until we are able to fully accept transgendered and bisexual people and lesbians and gay men as invaluable gifts of our common humanity. The fact is, getting in touch with our humanity, no matter what our sexual orientation, is tied to doing the fear work we all need to do so that all of us can embrace gay people. And that means that, by doing their own fear work, gay people themselves will find a greater self-acceptance" (ibid.: 1, my italics).
On a personal level, I am working on that last italicized sentence. After doing my own self-exploration in therapy this past long summer, I came to accept what deep down I’m sure I’ve always known: I’m gay or at least somewhere on that end of the continuum between gaydom and bisexuality. And, as I explore (although not physically yet) and learn more about myself and accept who I am, I’m also exploring our predominant cultural views and prejudices against homosexuality and bisexuality. At least Minor’s book is helping to explain why there is so much fear about homosexuality. And, as a Religious Studies professor, Minor also explains that the Bible does not in itself claim homosexuality a sin, but rather that it has been reinterpreted by Christians to match our predominant cultural views of "normal" vs. "aberrant" behaviors just as it was once "reinterpreted" to allow the continuance of slavery and the gross mistreatment of indigenous peoples not only here in the US but worldwide.
Perhaps this is why I’ve become an anthropologist. (As an anthropologist, I’m in good company, by the way, since Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict were both bisexual.) Perhaps this is why I became interested in other cultures and peoples at an early age—not just out of mere interest but because somehow I knew there was something about myself I would eventually have to face and explore from "outside looking in" in order to gain some measure of self-acceptance, to realize that what our culture proclaims is "normal" is by no means universal and unchanging.
As an anthropologist, I see different cultures on their own terms of what is acceptable vs. not acceptable. Minor states that we "live on the basis of the definitions and ideas about reality our culture gives us. And we do so without much reflection about them" (ibid. 27). He uses the apt metaphor that we’re like fish in water: the water surrounds us without calling attention to itself, and most of us never live in an alternative to the "wetness against our scales."
OK, I realize it has been far too long since my last blog entry, but the constant demands of grad school sort of made this, along with many other things, lesser priority. The crazy semester is now over, thank goodness. Now the wait to see how I did on finals and term papers and what my ultimate grades are.
One of my planned winter break activities is to catch up on some non-course-related reading. One of these readings is by a KU professor, Robert Minor, titled, Scared Straight. The subtitle is: "Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People And Why It’s So Hard to Be Human." I’ve only just started it, but I’m already enthralled with his writing and teaching about why LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender) people are so feared in our culture that there is an average of one gay man killed every two weeks in America just for being gay. Minor states: "I still see a nation obsessed with maintaining gender roles … I see men’s groups struggling to know why they exist and where to go next. I see therapists who are still trying to help people cope with a system that is profit-oriented and coping-oriented, not human-oriented or healing oriented" (Minor 2001: 4).
In his own words, Minor’s purpose for writing this book is to argue "that none of us, regardless of sexual orientation, will be able to live as human beings until we are able to fully accept transgendered and bisexual people and lesbians and gay men as invaluable gifts of our common humanity. The fact is, getting in touch with our humanity, no matter what our sexual orientation, is tied to doing the fear work we all need to do so that all of us can embrace gay people. And that means that, by doing their own fear work, gay people themselves will find a greater self-acceptance" (ibid.: 1, my italics).
On a personal level, I am working on that last italicized sentence. After doing my own self-exploration in therapy this past long summer, I came to accept what deep down I’m sure I’ve always known: I’m gay or at least somewhere on that end of the continuum between gaydom and bisexuality. And, as I explore (although not physically yet) and learn more about myself and accept who I am, I’m also exploring our predominant cultural views and prejudices against homosexuality and bisexuality. At least Minor’s book is helping to explain why there is so much fear about homosexuality. And, as a Religious Studies professor, Minor also explains that the Bible does not in itself claim homosexuality a sin, but rather that it has been reinterpreted by Christians to match our predominant cultural views of "normal" vs. "aberrant" behaviors just as it was once "reinterpreted" to allow the continuance of slavery and the gross mistreatment of indigenous peoples not only here in the US but worldwide.
Perhaps this is why I’ve become an anthropologist. (As an anthropologist, I’m in good company, by the way, since Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict were both bisexual.) Perhaps this is why I became interested in other cultures and peoples at an early age—not just out of mere interest but because somehow I knew there was something about myself I would eventually have to face and explore from "outside looking in" in order to gain some measure of self-acceptance, to realize that what our culture proclaims is "normal" is by no means universal and unchanging.
As an anthropologist, I see different cultures on their own terms of what is acceptable vs. not acceptable. Minor states that we "live on the basis of the definitions and ideas about reality our culture gives us. And we do so without much reflection about them" (ibid. 27). He uses the apt metaphor that we’re like fish in water: the water surrounds us without calling attention to itself, and most of us never live in an alternative to the "wetness against our scales."
Drawing of heart-taking ritual from Aztec codex, ca. 1500 A.D.
Anthropologists are often asked: How could such amazingly advanced and sophisticated civilizations as those of the Mayas and Aztecs have committed such "atrocious" acts like blood-letting from tongues and genitals, the ripping out of still-beating human hearts, ritual decapitation, and human sacrifice? The answer is easy. They grew up in their own cultures, their own water against their scales, their own beliefs of right vs. wrong, their own need to ritually appease their own gods (1), living with the taboos and fears of their own culture that happened to be different from ours. (By the way, lest one think that 500-1,000 years later we are so much more advanced and less brutal, think about it: we still kill and maim in war [look at Iraq] and in the streets of our cities, and many in our own culture [including sports heroes] take pleasure in organizing and watching boxing, street-fighting, dog-fighting and other such forms of "ritual blood-letting".)
Yet, living in our own prescribed culture of right vs. wrong passed down to us through our families and constantly reinforced through symbolism, the media, and religion among many other things, we resent anything that threatens to shake those foundations of our reality, such as love and marriage being only between man and woman. Hence the fear, the often violent reactions toward those of us who break that mold of reality that provides us with that deep sense of who we think we are—that hodgepodge of beliefs, rituals, morals, and behaviors we call our "culture."
As an anthropologist, I explore not only the contemporary and historic "realities" of other peoples and cultures, but also my own deep-rooted sense of "reality," its origins and foundations. And exploring and breaking through the boundaries of one’s own culture, one’s own deep-seated prescribed sense of reality, is scary. It’s part of that "fear work" Minor discusses that each of us must do if we truly want to be human. Truly living and being human, I’m coming to realize, means separating myself to some degree from what my culture "expects" of me as a man, a human being, and that takes courage and guts.
(1) Olmecs, Mayas, and Aztecs believed human sacrifice was necessary--the shedding and offering of blood in death was believed equated with the shedding of blood in childbirth and was considered a means of rebirth, to continue the life-giving and life-sustaining forces of sun and rain, necessary for agriculture and food production. It is believed many in the Mayan and Aztec civilizations considered giving their lives in this way as a god-given honor.
Reference:
Minor, Robert. 2001. Scared Straight. St. Louis: HumanityWorks!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
When Religion Is An Addiction
I went to a talk given last night by Dr. Robert Minor of the KU Religious Studies Department. He has just published a new book titled, When Religion Is An Addiction. In 2001, he published another book, Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human.
His talk was quite interesting. Basically, his main arguments are:
Religion is an addiction. Many people seek religion (especially Christianity) because they feel so bad about themselves and who they are. His point was, Why else would someone join a religion that promises the punishment of Eternal Child Abuse (Hell) by a supposedly loving Father?
Religion gives people an excuse not to confront their own feelings, fears, and prejudices. "It’s not me who hates homosexuals (or Jews or Muslims); God does, so I do." It’s a way to avoid confrontation with our darkest selves, which can make us feel so bad we need to change ourselves. This is something many of us are unwilling to do—change ourselves—so religion gives us the excuse that it’s okay to go on being our wretched selves and not have to change our thinking or our ways and take responsibility for our own beliefs and lives. Christianity tells us that’s just the way we are—we’re born sinners and evil-doers.
Many fundamentalist Christians cannot see past their own addiction, as addicts of any type cannot, and it’s unnecessary and useless to try and argue with them; in fact, doing so only encourages their addiction (and makes those who argue with them enablers) since they’re enabling the addictive thought process by validating the addict’s beliefs and behaviors.
Minor feels that, when someone tells him that human beings are evil, that’s telling him something about the person saying it (how they feel about themselves). That’s the same as saying, "I think I’m a bad person. I think I’m evil, so I need God or Jesus or Somebody or Something to tell me I was born in sin and evil, but that’s okay because everyone else is too, so that makes me not feel so bad about myself and the disgusting person I really think I am."
Perhaps this may seem a bit extreme, but he makes some very valid points, and it’s all definitely food for thought. Of course with me he’s basically preaching to the choir (no pun intended) since I’m already somewhere on the continuum between agnosticism and atheism anyway.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Learning an almost lost language
The few Mono Indians remaining who speak their tongue are passing it down to children to preserve culture. (A condensed version of an article in the Fresno Bee.)
This piece is particularly poignant:
By Charles McCarthy / The Fresno Bee 10/14/07
Source: Barbara Burrough
NORTH FORK -- Just uphill from an authentic cedar tepee -- or "nobi" in Mono -- four children sat down for a lesson in a language on the cusp of being lost.Volunteer teacher Barbara Burrough, one of the few people left who still speaks Mono, held up a cue card with the word "kah-why-you.""Horse," the youngsters said.Next was "moo-nah.""Mule," they said.Burrough's mother, 81-year-old Gertrude Davis, smiled as she watched the recent lesson unfold."I speak it, and I have no one to talk to, because no one knows how to speak the language or understand it," she said.In classrooms, Mono cultural sites and private homes in the North Fork area, Burrough and a few others are working hard to change that, one child at a time.Before contact with Spanish and English-speaking cultures in the 1800s, an estimated 5,000 spoke Mono in a territory that stretched from the San Joaquin River south to the Kern River.
Today, Burrough estimates that no more than 17 Mono around North Fork can converse in the native tongue -- and not all of them are fluent.It's unclear how many others outside the North Fork area might still know the language.North Fork Mono Rancheria Tribal Council Treasurer Maryann McGovran's son Cody, 13, has been one of Burrough's pupils for about two years. She said she isn't fluent in Mono, but she knows a few words.
Preserving the language is important, she said at tribal headquarters, because the language reflects the culture."It's the heart of our tribe," she said. "It shows who we are and what our people are about."
Mono is among 50 Native American languages in California that are considered endangered, said Leanne Hinton, professor emeritus in the linguistics department at the University of California at Berkeley. Another 50 already have disappeared since the early 1800s, she said."When you lose a language, it's a symptom of losing a whole culture," said Hinton, who has written three books devoted to endangered languages.But saving a language is no easy task -- especially when so few people still speak it.
Mono tribal officials say the decline of the language -- and traditional culture -- began as early as the 1810s with the arrival of outside cultures and languages.A series of broken treaties, land grabs and the integration of much North Fork Mono tribal land into the Sierra National Forest left the native residents little choice other than to join mining, lumber and agricultural economies.
In school, children were discouraged from speaking Mono. As late as the 1970s, Native American children in Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools were punished for speaking their native languages, said Andre Cramblit, Northern California Indian Development Council operations director and chairman of the Karuk tribal language restoration committee.Burrough said that her family escaped boarding school because her grandmother told her children to hide whenever a car came up their driveway."That's why we were able to hang on to our language," Burrough said.
Cox has invited parents to a series of Mono classes starting in November."It's important to know where you came from ... to have that sense of self," said Cox, 29, who learned Mono language and culture from her grandmother and others in North Fork but said she still is learning. She claims Chukchansi as well as Mono ancestors.For Burrough, the effort is a labor of love."With learning the language, you learn the culture," the 57-year-old Burrough said. "And with the culture, you learn respect. With respect, you learn to love the land and each other."
Burrough often holds outdoor classes on the rural property of Kendrick Sherman, a tribal elder who died in late September. The Sherman family has dedicated the property to the future of the Mono nation, Burrough said.Nine-year-old Antonio Beihn, a North Fork Elementary School student, said he signed up for the off-campus program because he is half-Mono and it's his culture."If it was lost, we wouldn't have what we have right now," he said.
The few Mono Indians remaining who speak their tongue are passing it down to children to preserve culture. (A condensed version of an article in the Fresno Bee.)
This piece is particularly poignant:
As late as the 1970s, Native American children in Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools were punished for speaking their native languages.... (And this is in the supposed land of the free?)
By Charles McCarthy / The Fresno Bee 10/14/07
Source: Barbara Burrough
NORTH FORK -- Just uphill from an authentic cedar tepee -- or "nobi" in Mono -- four children sat down for a lesson in a language on the cusp of being lost.Volunteer teacher Barbara Burrough, one of the few people left who still speaks Mono, held up a cue card with the word "kah-why-you.""Horse," the youngsters said.Next was "moo-nah.""Mule," they said.Burrough's mother, 81-year-old Gertrude Davis, smiled as she watched the recent lesson unfold."I speak it, and I have no one to talk to, because no one knows how to speak the language or understand it," she said.In classrooms, Mono cultural sites and private homes in the North Fork area, Burrough and a few others are working hard to change that, one child at a time.Before contact with Spanish and English-speaking cultures in the 1800s, an estimated 5,000 spoke Mono in a territory that stretched from the San Joaquin River south to the Kern River.
Today, Burrough estimates that no more than 17 Mono around North Fork can converse in the native tongue -- and not all of them are fluent.It's unclear how many others outside the North Fork area might still know the language.North Fork Mono Rancheria Tribal Council Treasurer Maryann McGovran's son Cody, 13, has been one of Burrough's pupils for about two years. She said she isn't fluent in Mono, but she knows a few words.
Preserving the language is important, she said at tribal headquarters, because the language reflects the culture."It's the heart of our tribe," she said. "It shows who we are and what our people are about."
Mono is among 50 Native American languages in California that are considered endangered, said Leanne Hinton, professor emeritus in the linguistics department at the University of California at Berkeley. Another 50 already have disappeared since the early 1800s, she said."When you lose a language, it's a symptom of losing a whole culture," said Hinton, who has written three books devoted to endangered languages.But saving a language is no easy task -- especially when so few people still speak it.
Mono tribal officials say the decline of the language -- and traditional culture -- began as early as the 1810s with the arrival of outside cultures and languages.A series of broken treaties, land grabs and the integration of much North Fork Mono tribal land into the Sierra National Forest left the native residents little choice other than to join mining, lumber and agricultural economies.
In school, children were discouraged from speaking Mono. As late as the 1970s, Native American children in Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools were punished for speaking their native languages, said Andre Cramblit, Northern California Indian Development Council operations director and chairman of the Karuk tribal language restoration committee.Burrough said that her family escaped boarding school because her grandmother told her children to hide whenever a car came up their driveway."That's why we were able to hang on to our language," Burrough said.
Cox has invited parents to a series of Mono classes starting in November."It's important to know where you came from ... to have that sense of self," said Cox, 29, who learned Mono language and culture from her grandmother and others in North Fork but said she still is learning. She claims Chukchansi as well as Mono ancestors.For Burrough, the effort is a labor of love."With learning the language, you learn the culture," the 57-year-old Burrough said. "And with the culture, you learn respect. With respect, you learn to love the land and each other."
Burrough often holds outdoor classes on the rural property of Kendrick Sherman, a tribal elder who died in late September. The Sherman family has dedicated the property to the future of the Mono nation, Burrough said.Nine-year-old Antonio Beihn, a North Fork Elementary School student, said he signed up for the off-campus program because he is half-Mono and it's his culture."If it was lost, we wouldn't have what we have right now," he said.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Čaačakiy Maččan 'inn Paysen 'Ačyankw
Coyote and the Pregnant Girl
A Rumsen Fable
Then Coyote said: "A dry earth is good. Go see what’s in the river!" "What’s in the river?" "One pretty girl." "That girl will be your wife." "Where will my children be?" "In your knee." The eagle said to him: "No, no good. In your elbow." "No good." "In your eyebrow." "No good." "In your back." "No good." Then Hummingbird declared: "No good. Here is good in your belly." Then the girl said: "How will I do it? How will I make children?" "Go, get married! This girl will be your wife." Then the girl left. Howling Coyote said: "Delouse me!" Then a wood tick was found on him. Then he got scared. Then he threw down the wood tick. Then the Howling Coyote grabbed (the tick) again. "Look! Look! Eat (it)! Eat my louse (tick)." Then the girl (ate) it. "Swallow! Swallow!" Then the girl became pregnant. Then she got scared. The girl ran. Then she made a pretty road. "I don’t like this road."
Neku kayy Čaačakiy Maččan: “MiSix a tsorkost pirre. ‘Ot ‘aiwis watčor-ta!”
then say Wild Dog: good ? dry earth go.look river-LOC
“’Inta rottey watčor-ta?”
what be river-LOC
“Imxala ‘ačyankw misix.”
one girl pretty
“Me ku xawwan Sa ‘ačyankw.”
2S-POSS IRREAL wife DEF girl
"’Ann ku rott ka ‘iswin?"
where IRREAL be 1S-POSS children
"Xuya me tuuls."
in 2S-POSS knee
Was kayy siirx: "Kuuwe kuuwe miSix. Kulus-ta."
3S-ACC say eagle no no good elbow-LOC
"Kuuwe miSix."
no good
"Simpur-ta."
eyebrow-LOC
"Kuuwe miSix."
no good
“Ritčiys-ta.”
back-LOC
"Kuuwe miSix."
no good
Neku kayy ‘Ummun: "Kuuwe miSix. Ne miSix pitin-ta."
then say Hummingbird no good here good belly-LOC
Neku kayy Sa ‘ačyankw: “’Ink ku ka ‘anamii? ‘Ink ku ‘anamii ka ‘iswin?”
then say DEF girl how IRREAL 1S do how IRREAL make 1S-POSS children
“’Ot me xawwesp! Me ku xawwan Sa ‘ačyankw.”
go 2S marry 2S IRREAL wife DEF girl
Neku wattin xuya Sa ‘ačyankw. Kayy Čaačakiy Maččan: “Ka-s kaxiy!”
then go-PAST away DEF girl say Wild Dog 1S-ACC delouse
Neku wa-s tonney pakkeliuwx. Neku šoxlon. Neku ‘aččep pakkeliuwx.
then 3S-ACC find wood tick then fear then throw.down wood.tick
Neku wa-s ‘urru Caačakiy Maččan. “Nenney! Ooyonk! Katt! ‘Amxay ka kaxx!”
then 3S-ACC grab Wild Dog search search eat (it) eat 1S-POSS louse
Neku wa-s Sa ‘ačyankw. “Xork! Xork!” Neku paysen Sa ‘ačyankw.
then 3S-ACC DEF girl swallow swallow then pregnant DEF girl
Neku šoxlon. Neku ‘uuwin Sa ‘ačyankw. Neku xič misix ‘innx. “Kuu ka ‘iwsen Sa ‘innx.”
then fear then run-PAST DEF girl then make pretty road no 1S like DEF road
This story appears in:
Kroeber, A. 1904. The Languages of the coast of California south of San Francisco. Berkeley: The University Press. (page 79)
IRREAL = past or future (i.e., not present). Irrealis particles seem fairly common in Amerindian languages. Irrealis particles also occur in Biloxi and Soke (Zoque).
Coyote and the Pregnant Girl
A Rumsen Fable
Another Rumsen Ohlone Coyote story. I suspect that this is merely a fragment of a larger story due to its rather odd ending and the fact that the text itself seems a little disjointed. But it is nevertheless entertaining.
Neku kayy Čaačakiy Maččan: “MiSix a tsorkost pirre. ‘Ot ‘aiwis watčorta!” “’Inta rottey watčorta?” “Imxala ‘ačyankw misix.” “Me ku xawwan Sa ‘ačyankw.” “’Ann ku rott ka ‘iswin?” “Xuya me tuuls.” Was kayy siirx: “Kuuwe kuuwe miSix. Kulusta.” “Kuuwe miSix.” “Simpurta.” “Kuuwe miSix.” “Ritčiysta.” “Kuuwe miSix.” Neku kayy ‘Ummun: “Kuuwe miSix. Ne miSix pitinta.” Neku kayy Sa ‘ačyankw: “’Ink ku ka ‘anamii? ‘Ink ku ‘anamii ka ‘iswin?” “’Ot me xawwesp! Me ku xawwan Sa ‘ačyankw.” Neku wattin xuya Sa ‘ačyankw. Kayy Čaačakiy Maččan: “Kas kaxiy!” Neku was tonney pakkeliuwx. Neku šoxlon. Neku ‘aččep pakkeliuwx. Neku was ‘urru Caačakiy Maččan. “Nenney! Ooyonk! Katt! ‘Amxay ka kaxx!” Neku was Sa ‘ačyankw. “Xork! Xork!” Neku paysen Sa ‘ačyankw. Neku šoxlon. Neku ‘uuwin Sa ‘ačyankw. Neku xič misix ‘innx. “Kuu ka ‘iwsen Sa ‘innx.”
Then Coyote said: "A dry earth is good. Go see what’s in the river!" "What’s in the river?" "One pretty girl." "That girl will be your wife." "Where will my children be?" "In your knee." The eagle said to him: "No, no good. In your elbow." "No good." "In your eyebrow." "No good." "In your back." "No good." Then Hummingbird declared: "No good. Here is good in your belly." Then the girl said: "How will I do it? How will I make children?" "Go, get married! This girl will be your wife." Then the girl left. Howling Coyote said: "Delouse me!" Then a wood tick was found on him. Then he got scared. Then he threw down the wood tick. Then the Howling Coyote grabbed (the tick) again. "Look! Look! Eat (it)! Eat my louse (tick)." Then the girl (ate) it. "Swallow! Swallow!" Then the girl became pregnant. Then she got scared. The girl ran. Then she made a pretty road. "I don’t like this road."
Neku kayy Čaačakiy Maččan: “MiSix a tsorkost pirre. ‘Ot ‘aiwis watčor-ta!”
then say Wild Dog: good ? dry earth go.look river-LOC
“’Inta rottey watčor-ta?”
what be river-LOC
“Imxala ‘ačyankw misix.”
one girl pretty
“Me ku xawwan Sa ‘ačyankw.”
2S-POSS IRREAL wife DEF girl
"’Ann ku rott ka ‘iswin?"
where IRREAL be 1S-POSS children
"Xuya me tuuls."
in 2S-POSS knee
Was kayy siirx: "Kuuwe kuuwe miSix. Kulus-ta."
3S-ACC say eagle no no good elbow-LOC
"Kuuwe miSix."
no good
"Simpur-ta."
eyebrow-LOC
"Kuuwe miSix."
no good
“Ritčiys-ta.”
back-LOC
"Kuuwe miSix."
no good
Neku kayy ‘Ummun: "Kuuwe miSix. Ne miSix pitin-ta."
then say Hummingbird no good here good belly-LOC
Neku kayy Sa ‘ačyankw: “’Ink ku ka ‘anamii? ‘Ink ku ‘anamii ka ‘iswin?”
then say DEF girl how IRREAL 1S do how IRREAL make 1S-POSS children
“’Ot me xawwesp! Me ku xawwan Sa ‘ačyankw.”
go 2S marry 2S IRREAL wife DEF girl
Neku wattin xuya Sa ‘ačyankw. Kayy Čaačakiy Maččan: “Ka-s kaxiy!”
then go-PAST away DEF girl say Wild Dog 1S-ACC delouse
Neku wa-s tonney pakkeliuwx. Neku šoxlon. Neku ‘aččep pakkeliuwx.
then 3S-ACC find wood tick then fear then throw.down wood.tick
Neku wa-s ‘urru Caačakiy Maččan. “Nenney! Ooyonk! Katt! ‘Amxay ka kaxx!”
then 3S-ACC grab Wild Dog search search eat (it) eat 1S-POSS louse
Neku wa-s Sa ‘ačyankw. “Xork! Xork!” Neku paysen Sa ‘ačyankw.
then 3S-ACC DEF girl swallow swallow then pregnant DEF girl
Neku šoxlon. Neku ‘uuwin Sa ‘ačyankw. Neku xič misix ‘innx. “Kuu ka ‘iwsen Sa ‘innx.”
then fear then run-PAST DEF girl then make pretty road no 1S like DEF road
This story appears in:
Kroeber, A. 1904. The Languages of the coast of California south of San Francisco. Berkeley: The University Press. (page 79)
IRREAL = past or future (i.e., not present). Irrealis particles seem fairly common in Amerindian languages. Irrealis particles also occur in Biloxi and Soke (Zoque).
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Cusco, An Imperial Capital
The Sacsayhuaman, or Imperial Palace, is the puma's head while the confluence of the two rivers is its tail. While jaguars roamed the other side of the Andes toward the Amazon, pumas or cougars roamed the Andes themselves.
As part of the course I’m taking on central Andean cultures, we’ve been studying Inkas and their once vast empire that was even greater in size than the Roman. Extending from southern Colombia down the Andes Mountains and along the Pacific coast to what is now Santiago, Chile, the Inka Empire had over 11,000 miles of roads. Inkas had no wheeled vehicles, and horses were unknown until the Spanish conquistadors arrived, but they did have native llamas and alpacas, which were adept at climbing up and down their steep mountain roads laden with up to 50 lbs. each of supplies or trade goods. Since there was a shortage of croplands in the steep mountainous terrain, Inkas became adept at terracing fields up steep hillsides and mountain slopes. Inkas did not use money, and they didn’t even have markets. Instead, men and women were employed on an as-needed basis by Inka overlords for community projects often involving the manufacture of goods or intense manual labor. In this marketless economy, workers were "paid" for their labor by receiving clothing, food, and other necessities and goods. Feasts of copious amounts of food and drink (including chicha, Inka corn beer) were often lavished upon these workers during and after projects. Inka emperors and overlords were very adept at distributing food, clothing, and other items to their populace and nobody wanted for anything.
Cusco, at a literally breathtaking elevation of 11,500 feet, was the capital city of the Inka Empire. It contained monumental edifices and architecture, grand palaces and temples trimmed in gold and silver, making it a fantastic sight to the Spanish invaders (à la Tenochtitlan of the Aztec Empire—how ironic that the Spanish were so impressed with these New World cities, saying there was nothing like them in Europe, before they laid them to waste!). Nobody could visit the city empty-handed, and anyone who visited had better have a sack of goods or materials strapped to their backs. The city was clean and well-kept with large areas of green parkland surrounding its massive imperial architecture.
What’s perhaps most interesting about this Native American capital, however, is that it appears to have been planned and laid out in the shape of a running puma, or cougar, viewed from above. (I can already foresee you UFO and extraterrestrial enthusiasts thinking alien intervention à la Nazca lines!) Look at the city plan above and see if you can spot the animal’s outline in Cusco's overall design.
Okay, if you missed it, take a look at this:
The Sacsayhuaman, or Imperial Palace, is the puma's head while the confluence of the two rivers is its tail. While jaguars roamed the other side of the Andes toward the Amazon, pumas or cougars roamed the Andes themselves.
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