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Other comments: Wyandot (also
Wyandotte, Wendat, Quendat or Huron) is the Iroquoian language
traditionally spoken by the people known as Wyandot or Wyandotte,
descended from the Tionontati. It is considered a sister to the Wendat
language, spoken by descendants of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy. It was
last spoken, before its revival, by members located primarily in
Oklahoma, United States, and Quebec, Canada. Linguists have
traditionally considered Wyandot as a dialect or modern form of Wendat.
Wyandot essentially died out as a spoken language with the death of the
last native speaker in 1972, though there are now attempts at
revitalization:
The Wyandotte Nation is offering Wyandot language classes in the
Wyandotte Public Schools grades K–4, at the Wyandotte Nation's preschool
"Turtle-Tots" program in Oklahoma and has created online language
lessons for self-study.
The Huron-Wendat Nation of Quebec is offering adult and children's
classes in the Wendat language at its village school in Wendake.
History
Relationship to Wendat
Although linguistics have equated with or seen as a dialect of the
Iroquoian Wendat (Huron), Wyandot became so differentiated as to be
considered a distinct language. This change appears to have happened
sometime between the mid-18th century, when the Jesuit missionary Pierre
Potier (1708–1781) documented the Petun dialect of Wendat in Canada, and
the mid-nineteenth century. By the time the ethnographer Marius Barbeau
made his transcriptions of the Wyandot language in Wyandotte, Oklahoma,
in 1911–1912, it had diverged enough to be considered a separate
language.
Significant differences between Wendat and Wyandot in diachronic
phonology, pronominal prefixes, and lexicon challenge the traditional
view that Wyandot is modern Wendat.[4] History suggests the roots of
this language are complex; the ancestors of the Wyandot were refugees
from various Huronian tribes who banded together to form one tribe.
After being displaced from their ancestral home in Canada on Georgian
Bay, the group traveled south, first to Ohio and later to Kansas and
Oklahoma. As many members of this group were Petun, some scholars have
suggested that Wyandot is more influenced by Petun than by its descent
from Wendat.
The work of Marius Barbeau was used by linguist Craig Kopris to
reconstruct Wyandot; he developed a grammar and dictionary of the
language. This work represents the most comprehensive research done on
the Wyandot language as spoken in Oklahoma just prior to its extinction
(or its "dormancy" as modern tribal members refer to it).
Wyandot
has only recorded traditional numerals from 1 to 10 many years ago. New
data for numbers after ten is required. |