by Cameron Pratt, Stephanie Rapp, Marcia Haag and Dylan Herrick
The Osage language is a vital part of Osage identity. The language suffered rapid decline during the twentieth century, but the Osage people are taking significant steps to revitalize its use. To that end, this volume—the first ever introductory Osage grammar textbook—is a much-needed resource for students, teachers, scholars, and anyone wishing to learn how to speak and write Osage.
Hoijer’s original transcriptions were largely unannotated and unglossed and were translated word for word, with no free English translation of full clauses. In this volume, Thomas R. Wier provides translations for each line of text along with morphological analysis of each Tonkawa word.
by Durbin Feeling, William Pulte and Gregory Pulte
Foreword by Bill John Baker
The stories of the Cherokee people presented here capture in written form tales of history, myth, and legend for readers, speakers, and scholars of the Cherokee language. Assembled by noted authorities on Cherokee, the volume marks an unparalleled contribution to the linguistic analysis, understanding, and preservation of Cherokee language and culture.
South Eastern Huastec, a Mayan language from Mexico, has never before been written down, but today’s older generations preserve the vast knowledge of their cultural heritage in speech. Collected and recorded by Ana Kondic in the village of San Francisco Chontla in La Sierra de Otontepec, Veracruz, Mexico, and translated into English and Spanish, the accounts in this landmark trilingual collection provide a rare opening into South Eastern Huastec traditions, oral literature, and daily life.
The Cherokees have the oldest and best-known Native American writing system in the United States. Invented by Sequoyah and made public in 1821, it was rapidly adopted, leading to nineteenth-century Cherokee literacy rates as high as 90 percent. This writing system, the Cherokee syllabary, is fully explained and used throughout this volume, the first and only complete published grammar of the Cherokee language.
This first scholarly dictionary of the Chickasaw language contains a Chickasaw-English section with approximately 12,000 main entries, secondary entries, and cross-references; an English-Chickasaw index; and an extensive introductory section describing the structure of Chickasaw words. The dictionary uses a new spelling system that represents tonal accent and the glottal stop, neither of which is shown in any previous dictionary on either Chickasaw or the closely related Muskogean language, Choctaw. In addition, vowel and consonant length, vowel nasalization, and other important distinctions are given.
In 1821, Sequoyah, a Cherokee metalworker and inventor, introduced a writing system that he had been developing for more than a decade. His creation—the Cherokee syllabary—helped his people learn to read and write within five years and became a principal part of their identity. This groundbreaking study traces the creation, dissemination, and evolution of Sequoyah’s syllabary from script to print to digital forms. Breaking with conventional understanding, author Ellen Cushman shows that the syllabary was not based on alphabetic writing, as is often thought, but rather on Cherokee syllables and, more importantly, on Cherokee meanings.
Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Sequoyah is widely celebrated as an unlettered Cherokee Indian who, endowed his whole tribe with learning – the only man in history to conceive and perfect in its entirety and alphabet or syllabary.
Stories are important in all human societies, and especially in those whose languages are threatened with extinction. The contributors to this volume, all linguists and linguistic anthropologists concerned with the revitalization of indigenous languages, draw on that understanding as they explore Native American storytelling both as a response to and a symptom of language endangerment. Edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, the essays show how traditional stories, and their nontraditional written descendants, such as poetry and graphic novels, help to maintain Native cultures and languages. Highlighting language renewal programs, Telling Stories in the Face of Danger presents case studies from various North American communities that show tribal stories as vehicles of moral development, healing, and the construction of identity.
In 1821, Sequoyah, a Cherokee metalworker and inventor, introduced a writing system that he had been developing for more than a decade. His creation—the Cherokee syllabary—helped his people learn to read and write within five years and became a principal part of their identity. This groundbreaking study traces the creation, dissemination, and evolution of Sequoyah’s syllabary from script to print to digital forms. Breaking with conventional understanding, author Ellen Cushman shows that the syllabary was not based on alphabetic writing, as is often thought, but rather on Cherokee syllables and, more importantly, on Cherokee meanings.
Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
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