#indegeniouslanguages

North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Thank you for the tag, @languagessi​​! I’ve always wanted to take part in these challenges, and whe I saw that there was a part about indegenious languages I couldn’t resist. I have also linked the references I’ve used in the post.

Day 1 - Cree 

What is the language called in English and the language itself?

"Cree" comes from the French name for the tribe, "Kristenaux," variously said to be a corruption of the French word for "Christian" or an Algonquian word for "first people." When speaking their own language the Cree refer to themselves as Ayisiniwok, meaning "true men," Nehiyawok, meaning "speakers of our language," or Iyiniwok, meaning simply "the people" (this word has the same Central Algonquian root as the Montagnais word Innu).

How many people speak the language?

Approximately 117,000 people speak Cree today. 

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

The Cree language is often described by linguists as a dialect continuum (a series of dialects that change gradually over a geographical area), also called Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi. 

This dialect continuum belongs to the Algonquian linguistic family, and is spoken across Canada, from the Rocky Mountains to Labrador.

Other languages that are in the same family tree as Cree are :  Ojibwa, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Mi'kmaq (Micmac), Arapaho, and Fox-Sauk-Kickapoo

What writing system does the language use?

The Cree language can be written using syllabics, which are symbols that represent a combination of consonant and vowel, or only a consonant or vowel. Over time, the Cree modified their writing system to adapt to local dialect variation and to increase its phonetic accuracy (i.e., correspondence of sound to alphabet symbol).

This is an example of Cree alphabets : 

I also noticed that Cree is sometimeswritten in Roman alphabets (probably to help people who aren’t familiar with the alphabet to pronounce the words).

There are 17 letters in the Cree alphabet, I found an interesting video on YouTube that gives an introduction to the alphabet [here].

What kind of grammatical features does the language have?

Cree is a polysynthetic, verb-based language with long words and fairly free word order.

What does the language sound like?

I found a nice video with a prayer in Cree with translations, it’s really beautiful. [Here] is the link. 

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

The language itself sounds beautiful to me, and I love the writing system but my favorite thing about Cree (and other indegenious languages) is how they continued to exist despite the governments’ efforts to erase them and the stigma that came with speaking the language that was seen as “less” important than French or English (many parents chose not to teach the language for their children so that they can “adapt” easier to the community, which is heartbreaking). I am fasinated by how the Natives resisted, and passed on the language, the history and their identity on to younger generation, so seeing that Cree is still taught and spoken to this day inspite of everything is heart warming. 

Bonus : five words that I learned in the language 

Nināskomtin - Thank you 

Tanisi - Hello 

Nîya - Me

Kîya - You

North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Tagged by, @languagessi​​. References are linked to the post.

Day 6 - Aleut

What is the language called in English and the language itself?

The language is known in English as Aleut, while the natives refer to their own language as “ Unangam Tunuu “

How many people speak the language?

.Of a population of about 2,200 Unangax̂, fewer than 100 speak the language.

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

It’s among the “Inuit-Yupik-Unangan” languages, I avoided using the name that I’ve seen mostly used since it contains a slur.

Relative languages include Inuit language,Yupik language,Atkan Aleut language. 

What writing system does the language use?

I wasn’t able to find any information about the writing system. 

What kind of grammatical features does the language have?

Open word classes in Aleut include nouns and verbs, both derived from stems with suffixes. 

Many stems are ambivalent, being both nominal and verbal. 

Other word classes include pronouns, contrastives, quantifiers, numerals, positional nouns, demonstratives, and interrogatives

What does the language sound like?

This is a video that teaches some vocabulary in Aleut language (audio included). 

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

There are no adjectives other than verbal nouns and participles in Aleut, which makes me curious about how the language finds the necessary turns to express this concept.

Bonus : common phrases 

Aang  Hello

Qilax^  Good morning

Iĝamanakuq?  I'm fine

North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Thank you for the tag, @languagessi​​! References are linked to the post. 

Day 2 - Navajo 

What is the language called in English and the language itself?

The language is called Navajo (pronounced as Nā-va-hō)  in English :  it comes from the Tewa word Navahu, which combines the roots nava ("field") and hu ("valley") to mean "large field". The Navajo refer to themselves as the Diné ("People"), with their language known as Diné bizaad ("People's language") or Naabeehó bizaad.

How many people speak the language?

The language has about 170 thousand Native Speakers. 

Note :  Navajo is spoken by the Navajo people of Arizona and New Mexico.

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

Navajo is an Athabaskan language, and along with Apache languages, make up the southernmost branch of the family. Most of the other Athabaskan languages are located in Alaska and along the North American Pacific coast.

What writing system does the language use?

Navajo wasn’t a written language until the mid 19th century, yet there was an interest by missionaries to compile different types of texts, but there wasn’t a standard writing system used for that purpose. In the 20th century, a standardized alphabet was designed and several books and dictionaries were published. The new standardized alphabet was not popular among the Navajos who did not trust the motives behind the literacy drive (which is quite understandable, in my humble opinion). Recently, an interest in the Navajo language has reimerged and the development of Navajo computer fonts has made it easier to publish written materials in Navajo.

Here’s how the standardized alphabet looks like :

What kind of grammatical features does the language have?

Navajo is a "verb-heavy" language — it has a great preponderance of verbs but relatively few nouns. 

In addition to verbs and nouns, Navajo has other elements such as pronouns, clitics of various functions, demonstratives, numerals, postpositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, among others.

Navajo has no separate words that correspond to the adjectives in English grammar: verbs provide the adjectival functionality.

What does the language sound like?

It sounds so beautiful!! For some reason, I had a sense of familiarity and warmth when I first heard the language, probably because of the glottal sounds that it has which made me feel that I might confuse it to a semetic language or maybe even a specific dialect of Arabic. This video is about a Navajo language course, and a lady speaks in Navajo in the introduction.

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

I was very interested when I saw how important the glottals are in the language, and I was curious to see how different the concept of glottals is when I compare it to Arabic. I was also happy to learn about the slashed l ( ł), how to pronounce it and why is it considered an “l” to being with. This video explains it very well. 

Bonus : five words that I learned in the language

Na’ - here / take it 

Goshį́į́ - ok 

Ge’ shoo - take a look at this 

ą́ą́ ‘ - it’s a conversation starter that mean “tell me” or “open up”

North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Tagged by, @languagessi​​! References are linked to the post.

Day 4-  Quechua

What is the language called in English and the language itself?

This is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes.

It’s usually referred to as  Runasimi ("people's language") in Quechuan languages

How many people speak the language?

Between 8 to 10 million speakers 

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

Quechua is the name of the family tree and the name of the group of languages spoken at the Inca Empire. I’ve seen some sources refer to them as a “language” with some varieties, while others consider them to be several languages.  Quechua varieties are spoken in Colombia (where the language is called Inga), Ecuador (where it is called kichwa or runa shimi), Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina (where it is usually spelled Quechua and called, by its speakers, runa simi).

What writing system does the language use?

Quechua has been written using the Roman alphabet since the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. However, written Quechua is rarely used by Quechua speakers because of the lack of printed material in Quechua.

What kind of grammatical features does the language have?

Quechua is an agglutinating language, meaning that words are built up from basic roots followed by several suffixes, each of which carry one meaning. 

Their large number of suffixes changes both the overall meaning of words and their subtle shades of meaning.

Their normal sentence order is SOV (subject–object–verb).

What does the language sound like?

Here’s a video of someone speaking Quechua with an adorable girl

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

A number of Quechua words have entered English and French via Spanish, for example :  coca, condor, guano, jerky, llama, pampa, poncho, puma, quinine, quinoa, vicuña

I was very interested when I found out that the language has several dialects, who are different (especially from a grammatical point of view) but the speakers are still able to understand each other, kind of like Arabic, my native language.

North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Tagged by, @languagessi​​! References are linked to the post.

Day 5 - Cherokee 

What is the language called in English and the language itself?

The language is called “Cherokee” in English. The Cherokee language is called Tsalagi Gawonihisdi.

How many people speak the language?

The number of speakers is in decline, according to a tally by the three Cherokee tribes in 2019 recorded : there are 2,100 speakers.

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

Cherokee is an Iroquoian language, and the only Southern Iroquoian language spoken today.  A relative language is Mohawk in New York 

What writing system does the language use?

The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah in the late 1810s and early 1820s to write the Cherokee language.

What kind of grammatical features does the language have?

Cherokee is polysynthetic, meaning that many morphemes may be linked together to form a single word, which may be of great length.

A single Cherokee word can convey ideas that would require multiple English words to express, including the context of the assertion, connotations about the speaker, the action, and the object of the action. 

The morphological complexity of the Cherokee language is best exhibited in verbs, which comprise approximately 75% of the language, as opposed to only 25% of the English language.

Verbs must contain at minimum a pronominal prefix, a verb root, an aspect suffix, and a modal suffix.

What does the language sound like?

This is a video of the “morning song” of the Cherokee language 

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

The names of the months are very interesting : they’re all different descriptions of the moon according to the season.

North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Tagged by, @languagessi​​! References are linked to the post.

Day 3 - Kʼicheʼ

What is the language called in English and the language itself?

Kʼicheʼ in English, while it’s called Qatzijobʼal "our language" to its speakers. 

How many people speak the language?

The language has over 2,330,000  speakers, it’s the most spoken indegenious language of central america (more specifically, in the central highlands of Guatemala)  and it’s one of the Mayan languages.

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

It is a member of the Quichean branch of the Mayan language family. 

Other languages in the Mayan family include : Yucatec language, Kaqchikel language, Tz'utujil language, and Chol language.

What writing system does the language use?

Different orthographies have been used to write (transliterate) K’iche’. The classic orthography based on the Spanish orthography has been replaced by a new standardized orthography defined by the ALMG (Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala).

Here are some different transliterations used :

What kind of grammatical features does the language have?

The Quiche languages are agglutinative and display fairly free word order-- although Quiche sentences are often verb-initial, as in most Mayan languages, SVO word order is also commonly used.

What does the language sound like?

Here’s a video of a native speaker speaking K’iche’

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

I read this fact and I found it very intersting : “ Contrary to the way many other languages use high pitch in child directed speech (babytalk), Kʼicheʼ babytalk has been shown not to use high pitch. Mayans in fact lower their pitch slightly when they speak to children, due to the fact that in the Quiche Mayan culture high pitch is very often used to address persons of high status “

Bonus : five words that I learned in the language

Good morning -Saqarik

Goodbye -Ch’abej chik

Thanks -Maltiox

Please -Malaq’ij

OK -Ja’e