Cree language gets 21st-century reboot from First Nation Canadians
Cree language gets 21st-century reboot from First Nation Canadians
New crowdsourced book 100 Days of Cree features translations of everything from pizzas and saunas to Johnny Cash songs
Alison Flood
Tuesday 7 June 2016 12.49 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 7 June 2016 12.51 EDT
With entries ranging from pwâkamo-pahkwêsikan, the Cree word for pizza the throw-up bread in literal English to môniyâw-matotisân, a sauna or a white-man sweat, a crowdsourcing project documenting the vitality and evolution of the most widely spoken indigenous language in Canada is about to be published.
Neal McLeod, a poet and indigenous studies professor at Trent University, set out to connect with other Cree speakers on Facebook, aiming to gather together classical Cree vocabulary and to coin and develop words relating to contemporary life. According to a 2006 Canadian census, there are around 117,000 Cree speakers.
McLeod, who is from the James Smith Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan, received responses from across Canada and the US and, after working on the book with Arok Wolvengrey, will release 100 Days of Cree through the University of Regina Press later this week.
In his introduction to the book, McLeod writes that one of the key things about learning a language is that people assist each other in the process, but that unfortunately, there have been many ruptures and breaks in the threads of our language through time: residential schools, collective trauma, and the influence of television and mass communication.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/07/cree-language-first-nation-canadians-100-days-of-cree
Nitram
(22,794 posts)...in their roots - language, customs, rituals, food, crafts/technology and spiritual beliefs. My wife and were invited to a ceremonial dinner on Bear Island in Temagami, Ontario last summer celebrating the completion of a NDaki Menan Stewardship Program to help First Nation teenagers learn more about their roots. Substance abuse and crime have been an issue for this community, and programs like this one are successfully helping teenagers gain control over their lives and further their understanding of who they are and where they came from.
http://www.culturalcamps.com/Cultural_Camps/Stewardship.html
http://www.temagamifirstnation.ca/
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)elljay
(1,178 posts)They can revive their language if they really want to. Hebrew came back to life after 2,000 years of being a written language. There are revivals of Welsh and Gaelic that have increased the number of speakers of those languages, though they are still in some danger. The destruction of Native American languages, religions and cultures is a disgraceful chapter in American history and I hope they are successful in holding on to their heritage.
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)elljay
(1,178 posts)His name was Eliezar Ben-Yehuda and his single-mindedness brought the spoken language back after 2,000 years.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/eliezer-ben-yehuda/
Nitram
(22,794 posts)Weren't texts read aloud in Hebrew? Certainly praiseworthy that Hebrew was revived as a spoken language, but it is a more difficult to revive a language that does not have a large written tradition.
elljay
(1,178 posts)But the language was Ancient Hebrew, with the vocabulary and grammar of two thousand years ago. The language was used mostly for prayers and religious texts. It would be like Chaucer's English- there are people who can read old English and understand it, but they don't speak it conversationally and wouldn't be able to discuss repairs to their Internet service or curse ( important when driving in traffic in any country!), there wasn't secular vernacular (engine, airplane, taxi,) and there was great resistance to using the spoken language in a non- religious context. In fact, in the Yiddish language my ancestors spoke, Yiddish is called "mama loshen" the mother language) and Hebrew "loshen kodesh" ( the holy language." So, it didn't come from nowhere, but it was a massive undertaking. Imagine what it would take if India declared spoken Sanskrit as the national language and everyone had to go back to the ancient texts and learn to speak it.
Nitram
(22,794 posts)Though the Catholic Church may have actually preserved the old Roman curse words somewhere in a locked room. Bet there were some good ones!