Native American Languages

Native American Languages, indigenous languages of the native peoples of North, Middle, and South America. Scholars can only guess at the total number of languages once spoken by Native Americans; many of these languages disappeared before they could be documented. When Europeans arrived on the North American continent in the late 15th century, about 300 distinct languages were in use. Little more than half of these languages survive today and the number of languages continues to diminish as fewer and fewer children learn to speak them. In Middle America (Mexico and Central America) experts have identified approximately 300 languages, of which about half are still spoken. Only about 350 of an estimated 1,500 native languages in South America are still spoken. These, too, are disappearing rapidly.

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MAJOR LANGUAGES

Native American languages are spoken by far more people in Middle and South America than in North America. The languages most widely spoken belong to the Quechua family. About 8 million people, most of them in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, speak Quechuan languages. Another language in that region, Aymara, has about 2.2 million speakers. Guaraní is spoken by about 90 percent of Paraguay’s population, nearly 5 million people; it is also spoken in Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia. Nahuatl has more than 1 million speakers, most of them in Mexico. Several Mayan languages spoken in southern Mexico and Central America have more than 500,000 speakers.

North American languages with the largest numbers of speakers include Navajo (150,000), Inuit (70,000), Ojibwa (45,000), Cree (35,000), Sioux (20,000), Choctaw (18,000), Central Alaskan Yupik (12,000), Tohono O’odham (12,000), and Creek (6,000). All of these languages are in danger of disappearing. Today the majority of North American languages are spoken primarily by elderly people, in some cases by no more than a handful.

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FEATURES OF NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES

Because of the great diversity of languages in the Americas there is great variety in their structure. Some have relatively few distinct sounds—Mohawk, a language of the Northeast in the United States, has just 15—whereas others have a great number—Tlingit, spoken in the Northwest, has 49. By comparison, American English has around 40.

Many Native American languages have sets of sounds called ejectives or glottalized consonants, such as t’ and k’. Speakers pronounce ejectives by building up air pressure in the mouth and releasing the sounds with a pop. Some of the languages distinguish consonants pronounced with rounded lips from those formed with unrounded lips; for example, there are two kinds of k sounds. Many of the languages contain uvular sounds, which are produced farther back in the mouth than the English k. Other languages, particularly those in California, distinguish between ñ, pronounced nyuh and made with the tip of the tongue against the teeth, and Ñ, pronounced with the tongue farther back, as in the -ing in dancing. In some Native American languages, pronouncing a syllable in a higher or lower pitch can change the meaning of a word.

Prefixes (additions to the front of a word, as un in unkind) and suffixes (additions to the end of a word, as ment in arrangement) convey a variety of meanings in Native American languages. On the Pacific Coast many languages use prefixes to make elaborate distinctions pertaining to direction and location. Prefixes can carry such meanings as “inside,” “outside,” “into,” “through,” “upward,” “downward,” “uphill,” “downhill,” “upriver,” “downriver,” and even “emerging from woods” and “deep in the woods, not visible from the village.” Prefixes also can indicate the way in which something is done. For example, in Central Pomo, a language of California, different prefixes added to a verb can indicate how something is toppled: by kicking, pushing, sitting too close, jabbing or poking, or shooting at it. Other prefixes added to the verb topple have a less literal meaning. Adding a prefix that means “by soaring” indicates “to fly away,” “by biting” indicates “to overeat,” and “by speaking” indicates “to get the best of someone in an argument.”

Many Native American languages compose words out of several meaningful parts. For example, a speaker of Barbareño Chumash, a language of southern California, can convey “We will quietly lock them up” in a single, seven-part word. To a root word meaning “lock,” prefixes are added to indicate who is doing the locking up, how many are involved, that the action is to take place in the future, and that it is a small or quiet action. Suffixes indicate that the locking up affects someone as well as how many people it affects.

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NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING SYSTEMS

Long before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, several hieroglyphic writing systems had developed in Middle America. These scripts, named for the groups who used them, include Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec, Epi-Olmec, and Maya. Most of these writing systems used symbols to stand for whole words or word roots. Maya writing, however, is a mixed script in which rebuses augment symbols. In a rebus (a kind of pictorial pun) the sign for one word can represent another that sounds like it. In an English rebus, for example, a picture of an eye can stand for the pronoun I. In Maya, a depiction of a torch (tah) was used to represent the word ta, meaning “in” or “at.” From these rebuses phonetic signs developed to represent syllables made up of a consonant and a vowel. The hieroglyphic texts of Middle America largely relate histories of rulers and their births, offices, marriages, and deaths.

Writing systems for a number of Native American languages developed after the arrival of Europeans. Some of these are syllabaries, in which each symbol represents a syllable (typically a consonant and a vowel). The Cherokee leader Sequoyah developed a Cherokee syllabary in the early 19th century. Methodist missionary James Evans developed a Cree syllabary, used by Cree and Ojibwa speakers, in the late 1830s. An Eskimo syllabary, based on the Cree syllabary, is used by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and Alaska. The Western Great Lakes syllabary, also called the Fox syllabary, is used by Fox, Sac (Sauk), Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Winnebago, and some Ojibwa speakers. Other systems are alphabetic, with separate letters for each consonant and each vowel.

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NATIVE AMERICAN ADDITIONS TO ENGLISH

Native American languages have greatly contributed to the vocabularies of European languages, especially place names and terms for plants, animals, and items of native culture. The name Canada comes from the Laurentian Iroquois word kanata meaning “settlement.” Mississippi comes from the words for big (mitsi) and river (sitpi) in an Algonquian language, probably Ojibwa or Cree. Alaska derives from the Aleut word for the Alaskan Peninsula, alakhskhakh. Minnesota stems from Sioux words for water (mni) and clear (sota). Nebraska is from the Omaha name for the Platte River, nibdhathka, meaning “flat river.” Oklahoma was coined from the Choctaw term for Indian Territory, which combined okla, meaning “people” or “nation,” and homa, meaning “red.” Tennessee originates from tanasi, the Cherokee name for the Little Tennessee River. Texas is from the Caddo word tyóa for friend and was an area where tribes allied with the Caddo were living. The names Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua all have their source in the Nahuatl language.

The largest number of English nouns borrowed from Native American languages come from Algonquian languages, the languages first encountered by English settlers. Among these nouns are caribou, chipmunk, hickory, hominy, moccasin, moose, opossum, papoose, persimmon, powwow, raccoon, skunk, squash, squaw, toboggan, tomahawk, and totem. Eskimo languages contributed such words as igloo and kayak. The term teepee or tipi originates from the Sioux word for dwelling.

From Nahuatl, spoken in Middle America, come avocado, cacao, cocoa, chile/chili, chocolate, coyote, tamale, tomato, and many others. Contributions from South American languages include jaguar, cashew, tapioca, and toucan from Tupinambá; alpaca, condor, jerky, llama, puma, and quinine from Quechua; and barbecue, canoe, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, papaya, and potato from Maipurean (Arawakan).

Native American languages, in turn, have borrowed words from European languages. Borrowings from Russian appear in languages along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. They include the Yupik word kass’aq, meaning “white man,” from the Russian word kazak’ (Cossack in English), and the Pomo word tûlqa, meaning “broken glass,” from the Russian butylka (bottle in English). Many borrowings from Spanish appear in native languages of California, the American Southwest, and Middle America. French loans occur in languages of eastern Canada, such as the Mohawk word rakarçns, meaning “barn,” from the French la grange. English loans are common in many native languages of North America.

Some Native American languages share certain words that they have taken from one another. A term for buffalo, similar to yanis, appears in Choctaw, Cherokee, Catawba, and Biloxi, among other languages. Because these languages belong to different families and have not evolved from a common ancestral language, the word cannot be a common inheritance but must have been adopted by people in contact with each other.

Borrowed words also reveal much about cultural history. Mixe-Zoquean languages, for example, have contributed many words to other languages of Middle America. Linguists see these borrowings as evidence that the Olmecs, who founded the first highly successful civilization in Middle America around 1500 bc, spoke a Mixe-Zoquean language.

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NATIVE AMERICAN PIDGINS AND TRADE JARGONS

To facilitate trade, a number of trade languages known as pidgins developed in the Americas, especially after the arrival of Europeans. A pidgin is a language with an extremely limited vocabulary and a simplified grammar that enables people with different native languages to communicate. One of the better-known pidgins in the Americas is Eskimo Trade Jargon, used in the 19th century by Inuit when dealing with whites and members of other Native American groups on Copper Island in the Aleutian Islands. Others include Mednyj Aleut, used in the 19th century by descendants of a mixed Russian-Aleut population in the Aleutian Islands; Chinook Jargon, used during the first half of the 19th century by Native Americans and white settlers in the Northwest along the Pacific Coast; and Michif (also called Metchif, Métis, and French Cree), used currently by descendants of French-speaking fur traders and Algonquian women on the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. In South America, Nheengatu or Lingua Geral Amazonica developed in northern Brazil for communication among people of Native American, European, and African origin.

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AMERICAN INDIAN SIGN LANGUAGE

Sign language became a common means of communication for tribes on the Great Plains, a phenomenon familiar from motion pictures and popular fiction. The Kiowa are renowned as excellent sign talkers, while in the northern Plains the Crow helped spread this method of communication to others. Plains sign language eventually spread as far as the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Not all Plains tribes conversed in sign language with equal proficiency, however.

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CLASSIFICATION

Scholars classify languages into families according to their origins. For example, English, German, Russian, Greek, Hindi, and many other languages of Europe and Asia belong to the Indo-European language family because they all descend from a single language known as Proto-Indo-European. Classifying Native American languages into families presents a number of challenges because so little written documentation exists for many of the languages. As a result, experts must infer much of what is known about the early development and characteristics of these languages from modern information.

The first general classification was suggested in 1891 by American geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell. On the basis of superficial similarities he noticed among vocabularies, he proposed that the languages of North America constituted 58 independent families. At the same time, American anthropologist Daniel Brinton proposed 80 families for South America. These two classifications of language families form the basis of subsequent classifications.

In 1929 American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir tentatively proposed classifying these language families into 6 large groups in North America and 15 in Middle America. In 1987 American linguist Joseph Greenberg hypothesized that the indigenous languages of the Americas could be grouped into 3 superfamilies: Eskimo-Aleut (now called Inuit-Aleut or Eskimaleut), Na-Dené, and Amerind. The postulated Amerind superfamily was said to contain the majority of Native American languages and be divided into 11 branches. However, nearly all specialists reject Greenberg’s classification.

As linguists learn more about Native American languages, they can better distinguish between similarities in vocabulary and grammar that result from borrowings and similarities that are the consequences of a common ancestral language. The classification most linguists endorse today places about 55 independent language families in North America, 15 in Middle America, and about 115 in South America.

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LANGUAGE FAMILIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

As we move from east to west in North America, the number of Native American language families increases. Three major families exist in the East, whereas 20 are found in California alone.

The first Native American languages Europeans encountered and recorded in North America were the Algonquian languages, and they are among the better-known native languages. The Algonquian languages belong to the Algic family, which stretches from Labrador in eastern Canada to North Carolina in the south and westward across the Plains to California. Among the languages in this group are Abenaki, Massachuset, Narragansett, and Mohegan in the East and Shawnee, Fox-Sac-Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Cree, Menominee, and Cheyenne on the Plains. Iroquoian, another major language family in the Northeast, includes Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga, as well as Cherokee in the South. The Muskogean family in the Southeast includes Choctaw-Chickasaw and Creek.

Two major language families on the prairies are Siouan and Caddo. Siouan languages, which include Assiniboine, Crow, Sioux (also known as Dakota, Nakota, or Lakota), and Winnebago, extend from the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan south through Montana and the Dakotas into Arkansas and Mississippi, with some members in the Carolinas. Caddoan includes Caddo, Pawnee, and Wichita.

The Uto-Aztecan language family spans a wide area from Oregon to Central America. Languages in this family include Northern Paiute in the northwest, Comanche in Oklahoma, and Ute, Hopi, and Nahuatl in Mexico. See also Aztec Empire.

The Eskimo-Aleut family stretches from Greenland across northern Canada, into Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, and finally to Siberia in eastern Russia. The Athapaskan-Eyak-Tlingit family, which extends from Alaska to New Mexico, includes Eyak and Tlingit in Alaska and Athapaskan languages in western Canada, northern California, and the Southwest. The Apachean branch of this family, in the Southwest, includes Navajo and Apache.

Other major families of the northwest coastal region are Tsimshian, Salishan, and Chinookan. A number of additional families are found in California.

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LANGUAGE FAMILIES IN MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

Fifteen families of languages are native to Mexico and Central America. Some of these families, such as Uto-Aztecan, overlap into North America, and others, such as Chibchan (see Chibcha) and Maipurean, extend from South America into Middle America.

The Maya family consists of 31 languages spoken principally in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Chol was the main language during the Classic period of Maya civilization, from about ad 300 to 900. It was joined later by Yucatec Maya. Several Mayan languages have many speakers, including Yucatec Maya with 700,000, K’iche’ with 675,000, Mam with 500,000, and Kaqchikel with 375,000. More people speak each of these languages than speak all the Native American languages in Canada and the United States combined. However, other languages in the Mayan family have very few speakers; two are already extinct.

The Otomanguean family contains about 30 languages, in a geographic area that extends from northern Mexico to Nicaragua. The most widely spoken Otomanguean languages are Zapotec with 425,000, Mixtec with 300,000, and Otomi with 225,00,000 speakers.

The Mixe-Zoquean family is of special importance because the Olmecs, who founded the first great civilization of Middle America about 1200 bc, appear to have spoken a language in this family. Today, a dozen or so Mixe-Zoquean languages are spoken in southern Mexico.

Another large family is Uto-Aztecan, which extends from the Western United States through Mexico and into Central America. It includes Nahuatl, the language of the ancient civilizations of the Toltecs, which lasted from the 10th to 13th centuries, and the Aztecs, which lasted from the 14th to 16th centuries, and their modern descendents. More than 1 million people speak Nahuatl today.

Several languages of the Chibchan family are spoken in lower Central America, including Paya, Rama, Bribri, and Guaymi, while most Chibchan languages are found in northern South America. A number of smaller families and isolated languages are also found in Middle America. They include the Tequistlatecan family in Mexico, the Xincan family in Guatemala, the Jicaque family in Honduras, and the Lencan family in Honduras and El Salvador.

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LANGUAGE FAMILIES IN SOUTH AMERICA

Linguists have had much difficulty in classifying South American languages. Although linguists have grouped the approximately 1,500 languages into 118 distinct families and isolates, considerable descriptive and historical research remains to be done in order to gain a clearer understanding of these languages.

The Maipurean (or Arawakan) family covers the widest area in the western hemisphere of any native language family. Languages in this family are spoken throughout the Antilles; in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua; and in all South American countries except Uruguay and Chile. Of the 65 languages in this family, 31 are now extinct. One of the extinct languages, Taíno, was the first Native American language encountered by Columbus. Taíno contributed many words to Spanish and other European languages. Maipurean languages that are still spoken include Baniva (Venezuela), Maipure (Colombia and Venezuela), Arawak or Locono (Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana, and Venezuela), Garifuna or Black Carib (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras), Amuesha (Peru), and Piro (Brazil, Peru).

Languages in the Quechua family have more speakers than any other family in the Americas—about 8 million in all. More than half the speakers live in Peru, where Quechua and Spanish are the two official languages. Quechua was the language of the ancient Inca civilization, which flourished from the mid-1400s to the mid-1500s. Quechuan languages are spoken in the region of the Andes Mountains in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina, in addition to Peru.

Aymaran is another large language family of the Andes region. The dominant language in the family, Aymara, has about 2.2 million speakers in Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Argentina.

The language family Chibchan stretches from northern South America into Central America. Chibchan languages include Tiribi, Bribri, and Boruca (Costa Rica); Guaymi (Panama); Paya (Honduras); Rama (Nicaragua); Kuna (Panama, Colombia); and Cagaba or Kogi (Colombia). The now extinct Muisca (or Chibcha) was the language of an advanced civilization in Colombia at the time of the Spanish conquest (early 1500s).

The extensive Tupian family includes the Tupí-Guaraní branch that alone contains about 30 languages spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. Guaraní has close to 5 million speakers in Paraguay; about 90 percent of the Paraguayan population speak Guaraní, and about 75 percent speak Spanish. The Guaraní branch of the family consists of nine languages, spoken in Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil. Tupí, an important language in colonial times, has contributed a number of words to the vocabulary of Spanish and other European languages.

Languages in the Cariban family are spoken mainly in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Surinam, and Venezuela. Many of the 45 languages in this family are extinct, however. The earliest references to Cariban speakers come from the 15th-century journals of Spanish Italian navigator Christopher Columbus. The Arawakan peoples Columbus encountered spoke of the fierce Caniba or Canima, their term for the Carib tribe and the source of our word cannibal (flesh-eater). Other important language families in South America include Pano-Tacanan languages of Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru; Ge languages of Brazil; and Shuar languages of Ecuador and Peru.

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LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT

Today, about 150 of the approximately 300 languages native to North America remain, but only 50 of these are widely spoken. Many of these languages will disappear within a generation. Language extinction is also a serious problem in Latin America. Languages evolve over the course of centuries to meet the needs of their speakers and to convey the thoughts these speakers choose to express. Each language shows us a unique way of understanding experience; the loss of a language means the loss of all that could be learned through the study of that language about human values, oral literature and tradition, history, and human thought.