Native American Languages and “Last of the Mohicans”
This quote is from James Fenimore Cooper’s classic “Last of the Mohicans”
Although Cooper’s writing is a bit old fashion and forgive his non politically correctness, his description of Native American languages very interesting, beautiful and I think accurate. If you have ever tried to learn languages that are not French, German, Spanish or typical Western European languages you know what I am talking about. Everything from the way things are expressed to the way people think is different.
“The imagery of the Indian (Native American), both in his poetry and in his oratory, is oriental; chastened, and perhaps improved, by the limited range of his practical knowledge. He draws his metaphors from the clouds, the seasons, the birds, the beasts, and the vegetable world. In this, perhaps, he does no more than any other energetic and imaginative race would do, being compelled to set bounds to fancy by experience; but the North American Indian clothes his ideas in a dress which is different from that of the African, and is oriental in itself. His language has the richness and sententious fullness of the Chinese. He will express a phrase in a word, and he will qualify the meaning of an entire sentence by a syllable; he will even convey different significations by the simplest inflections of the voice.” -”Last of the Mohicans”
I find many languages can convey things with inflections and an economy of words, whereas English is very wordy and non-inflective and metaphors are less naturalistic. One is not better than the other, just different. I would love to know more about Native American languages and invite comments about Native American languages.
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July 23, 2007at 9:36 am
Thanks for this comment. I work with Indigenous languages both for documentation and revitalization — the two efforts that are most important today. It was interesting to read Fenimore’s description …certainly it is accurate in terms of describing the agglutinative syntax that exists in most Native American languages. The sadness today is the extreme endangerment of these languages (see Krauss’ 1992 article on James Crawford’s website; also see the work that is going on through Joh Reyhner’s site –check out the Indigenous Languages and Technology listserv, especially their archives and there is a general site just called ‘Native American Languages’ which give a good overall picture ) There is a strong effort to train Native peoples to work with and save their own languages (see http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aildi) — sorry I can’t remember the other specific URLs…
Keep spreading the word — more attention to this issue is needed!
Thanks
Susan