/ IN THE HURON LANGUAGE
 1- Meaning of word wendat.
Wendat is the name of a confederacy
living southern Ontario, from Detroit to almost Quebec. The word
wendat means " Islander ". The english pronunciation of the word
"wendat " is " wyandot " or " wyandotte". The french called the
Wendat : " Huron ". The meaning of the word wendat changed for "
people " or " villager " after 1798. The Huron living in Quebec
called theirself also " Wendat " or " agwawendarahk ", which does
mean "we are the people which live of a floating land ".
2-Pronunciation
2.1 Changed in the wendat language.
Is there a difference between the
wendat language of 1630 and the Wendat language of the Wendat who
lived in Ohio by 1840 or in Kansas in 1850 ?
Here is a text that show that there
is not a great difference according the Wendat of Kansas. ( text from
a linguist from the Government of United States visiting the
Wyandotte in Kansas, in 1849).
" I was very anxious to get correct
information concerning the Wyandot or Huron language, of which Lord
Monboddo and others had given such a strange character, and which was
only known to me from Father Sagard's imperfect dictionary, when I
fortunately became acquainted with Messrs. Isaac Walker and Robert
Armstrong, both interpreters of that nation, to whom the language has
been familiar from their infancy. I shewed them the dictionary of
Father Sagard ( dictionary written in1630 ) , in which, amidst its
numerous errors and mistaker, which they easily discovered and
pointed out, they gladly recognised the language of their nation. It
did not appear to them to have undergone any material change in the
period of two hundred years since that book was written, which
sufficiently contradicts the good father's assertion in his preface,
that that language is so constantly changing, that after a lapse of
time it appears almost entirely new.
They were greatly astonished, when I shewed them that part of the preface in which the author says : that the Huron is " une langue presque sans règles, et
tellement imparfaite, qu'un plus habile que lui (Sagard) se
trouveroit bien empêché, non pas de le critiquer ; mais
de mieux faire "; not with standing that, I cannot express the
pleasure which they received from that little book. By the help of
it, after I had become a little familiar with their pronunciation, I
ventured to ask them some questions in the Huron, several of which I
had the satisfaction to find they understood and answered. The
language appeared to me to be sweet and harmonious ; the accent is in
general placed on the last syllable and sometimes on the penultima ;
they often articulate double consonants like the Italians ; they have
the nasal vowels of the French, but pronounce them in a more delicate
manner, not unlike that of the Creoles of the French West Indies :
upon the whole I think I may say that there is a great deal of music
in the idiom. One of the interpreters, at my request, recited slowly
and with emphasis part of a speech, by which I acquired a pretty
clear idea of the modulation of the language. "
2.2 Alphabet
The Wyandot language by an observer
in 1870 ( Anderdon, Canada ).
This and the other Indian languages
have scarcely any trace of European origin; while it appears pretty
evident, that there are to be found in their construction at least
some traces of oriental origin. As the Wyandot language was never
committed to weiting, there were several difficulties to be
encountered in learning it so as to commit it to paper. The writer of
these remarks found it necessary to learn some of the language, in
order to fix upon the elementary sounds of its vowels and consonants.
He soon found that there were several consonants employed in the
English, which had no place in the Wyandot language, and that there
were several vowel sounds for which there were no exact similars to
be found in any of the European languages, nor in the Hebrew or its
derivatives, the Chaldee, Syriac, or Arabic. After examining the
alphabets of these languages, he found it necessary to make one to
suit the Wyandot language, adopting those letters in our own alphabet
whose sounds were found in the Wyandot, and then using certain marks
attached to other letters, so that there might be a character to
represent every sound in the Wyandot language. Our consonants, b, f,
l, p, v, had no place in Wyandot; and the strong guttural vowel
sounds shich prevail in this and every other Indian tongue had no
similar sounds in any European, or probably in any oriental tongue.
3.0 Lexicon
Click here for current words ...
This web page is written by Michel Gros-Louis , linguist. (copyright 1999).Comments ? at groslouismichel@hotmail.com |
