Native American Languages

V

Native American Additions to English

Native American languages have greatly contributed to the vocabularies of European languages, especially place names and terms for plants, animals, and items of native culture. The name Canada comes from the Laurentian Iroquois word kanata meaning “settlement.” Mississippi comes from the words for big (mitsi) and river (sitpi) in an Algonquian language, probably Ojibwa or Cree. Alaska derives from the Aleut word for the Alaskan Peninsula, alakhskhakh. Minnesota stems from Sioux words for water (mni) and clear (sota). Nebraska is from the Omaha name for the Platte River, nibdhathka, meaning “flat river.” Oklahoma was coined from the Choctaw term for Indian Territory, which combined okla, meaning “people” or “nation,” and homa, meaning “red.” Tennessee originates from tanasi, the Cherokee name for the Little Tennessee River. Texas is from the Caddo word tyóa for friend and was an area where tribes allied with the Caddo were living. The names Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua all have their source in the Nahuatl language.

The largest number of English nouns borrowed from Native American languages come from Algonquian languages, the languages first encountered by English settlers. Among these nouns are caribou, chipmunk, hickory, hominy, moccasin, moose, opossum, papoose, persimmon, powwow, raccoon, skunk, squash, squaw, toboggan, tomahawk, and totem. Eskimo languages contributed such words as igloo and kayak. The term teepee or tipi originates from the Sioux word for dwelling.

From Nahuatl, spoken in Middle America, come avocado, cacao, cocoa, chile/chili, chocolate, coyote, tamale, tomato, and many others. Contributions from South American languages include jaguar, cashew, tapioca, and toucan from Tupinambá; alpaca, condor, jerky, llama, puma, and quinine from Quechua; and barbecue, canoe, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, papaya, and potato from Maipurean (Arawakan).

Native American languages, in turn, have borrowed words from European languages. Borrowings from Russian appear in languages along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. They include the Yupik word kass’aq, meaning “white man,” from the Russian word kazak’ (Cossack in English), and the Pomo word tûlqa, meaning “broken glass,” from the Russian butylka (bottle in English). Many borrowings from Spanish appear in native languages of California, the American Southwest, and Middle America. French loans occur in languages of eastern Canada, such as the Mohawk word rakarçns, meaning “barn,” from the French la grange. English loans are common in many native languages of North America.

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Some Native American languages share certain words that they have taken from one another. A term for buffalo, similar to yanis, appears in Choctaw, Cherokee, Catawba, and Biloxi, among other languages. Because these languages belong to different families and have not evolved from a common ancestral language, the word cannot be a common inheritance but must have been adopted by people in contact with each other.

Borrowed words also reveal much about cultural history. Mixe-Zoquean languages, for example, have contributed many words to other languages of Middle America. Linguists see these borrowings as evidence that the Olmecs, who founded the first highly successful civilization in Middle America around 1500 bc, spoke a Mixe-Zoquean language.

VI

Native American Pidgins and Trade Jargons

To facilitate trade, a number of trade languages known as pidgins developed in the Americas, especially after the arrival of Europeans. A pidgin is a language with an extremely limited vocabulary and a simplified grammar that enables people with different native languages to communicate. One of the better-known pidgins in the Americas is Eskimo Trade Jargon, used in the 19th century by Inuit when dealing with whites and members of other Native American groups on Copper Island in the Aleutian Islands. Others include Mednyj Aleut, used in the 19th century by descendants of a mixed Russian-Aleut population in the Aleutian Islands; Chinook Jargon, used during the first half of the 19th century by Native Americans and white settlers in the Northwest along the Pacific Coast; and Michif (also called Metchif, Métis, and French Cree), used currently by descendants of French-speaking fur traders and Algonquian women on the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. In South America, Nheengatu or Lingua Geral Amazonica developed in northern Brazil for communication among people of Native American, European, and African origin.

VII

American Indian Sign Language

Sign language became a common means of communication for tribes on the Great Plains, a phenomenon familiar from motion pictures and popular fiction. The Kiowa are renowned as excellent sign talkers, while in the northern Plains the Crow helped spread this method of communication to others. Plains sign language eventually spread as far as the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Not all Plains tribes conversed in sign language with equal proficiency, however.

VIII

Classification

Scholars classify languages into families according to their origins. For example, English, German, Russian, Greek, Hindi, and many other languages of Europe and Asia belong to the Indo-European language family because they all descend from a single language known as Proto-Indo-European. Classifying Native American languages into families presents a number of challenges because so little written documentation exists for many of the languages. As a result, experts must infer much of what is known about the early development and characteristics of these languages from modern information.

The first general classification was suggested in 1891 by American geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell. On the basis of superficial similarities he noticed among vocabularies, he proposed that the languages of North America constituted 58 independent families. At the same time, American anthropologist Daniel Brinton proposed 80 families for South America. These two classifications of language families form the basis of subsequent classifications.

In 1929 American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir tentatively proposed classifying these language families into 6 large groups in North America and 15 in Middle America. In 1987 American linguist Joseph Greenberg hypothesized that the indigenous languages of the Americas could be grouped into 3 superfamilies: Eskimo-Aleut (now called Inuit-Aleut or Eskimaleut), Na-Dené, and Amerind. The postulated Amerind superfamily was said to contain the majority of Native American languages and be divided into 11 branches. However, nearly all specialists reject Greenberg’s classification.

As linguists learn more about Native American languages, they can better distinguish between similarities in vocabulary and grammar that result from borrowings and similarities that are the consequences of a common ancestral language. The classification most linguists endorse today places about 55 independent language families in North America, 15 in Middle America, and about 115 in South America.

IX

Language Families in the United States and Canada

As we move from east to west in North America, the number of Native American language families increases. Three major families exist in the East, whereas 20 are found in California alone.

The first Native American languages Europeans encountered and recorded in North America were the Algonquian languages, and they are among the better-known native languages. The Algonquian languages belong to the Algic family, which stretches from Labrador in eastern Canada to North Carolina in the south and westward across the Plains to California. Among the languages in this group are Abenaki, Massachuset, Narragansett, and Mohegan in the East and Shawnee, Fox-Sac-Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Cree, Menominee, and Cheyenne on the Plains. Iroquoian, another major language family in the Northeast, includes Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga, as well as Cherokee in the South. The Muskogean family in the Southeast includes Choctaw-Chickasaw and Creek.

Two major language families on the prairies are Siouan and Caddo. Siouan languages, which include Assiniboine, Crow, Sioux (also known as Dakota, Nakota, or Lakota), and Winnebago, extend from the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan south through Montana and the Dakotas into Arkansas and Mississippi, with some members in the Carolinas. Caddoan includes Caddo, Pawnee, and Wichita.

The Uto-Aztecan language family spans a wide area from Oregon to Central America. Languages in this family include Northern Paiute in the northwest, Comanche in Oklahoma, and Ute, Hopi, and Nahuatl in Mexico. See also Aztec Empire.

The Eskimo-Aleut family stretches from Greenland across northern Canada, into Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, and finally to Siberia in eastern Russia. The Athapaskan-Eyak-Tlingit family, which extends from Alaska to New Mexico, includes Eyak and Tlingit in Alaska and Athapaskan languages in western Canada, northern California, and the Southwest. The Apachean branch of this family, in the Southwest, includes Navajo and Apache.

Other major families of the northwest coastal region are Tsimshian, Salishan, and Chinookan. A number of additional families are found in California.

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