A World of Variety: Klallam (Salishan)
Extent of the Salishan language family
Klallam is a nearly extinct
language that was spoken along the north side of the Olympic Peninsula and in coastal areas of Vancouver Island
on the other side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It's a member of the Coast Salish language family. Like many
Salishan languages, it has a healthy dose of glottal stops together with numerous unusual consonants,
many of which are difficult for English speakers to discern or pronounce.
It's only appropriate that I picked this language to represent the Salishan family, since
I just visited the Olympic Peninsula in January. Although,
I would like to find more information on the wonderfully named Lushootseed language (indigenous
to the Seattle metro area.)
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A World of Variety: Arikara (Caddoan)
Extent of the Caddoan language family
Arikara is a severely endangered language spoken only on the
Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. It's one of the last remaining representatives of the Caddoan languages, which were, in pre-contact times,
widespread in the south central U.S., primarily in what is now Oklahoma.
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A World of Variety: Tlingit (Na-Dené)
Extent of the Na-Dené language family
Tlingit
is a language spoken along the coast of southeastern Alaska and northern British Columbia. It's related to other languages in the interior,
the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Alaska, but surprisingly, also to the Navajo language of the American Southwest through its membership in
the Na-Dené superfamily.
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A World of Variety: Creek (Muskogean)
Extent of the Muskogean language family
Creek (not to be confused with Cree)
is a Muskogean language that was spoken in what is now the states of Alabama and Georgia. This language and its relatives such as
Miccosukee, Koasati, and even (you guessed it...) Alabama, once dominated the southeastern United States.
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A World of Variety: Lakota (Siouxan)
Extent of the Siouxan language family
Lakota is probably the most iconic Native American culture.
The painted warriors on galloping horses, feathered headdresses, long braids, and itinerant tepees of TV and movies all owe their origin to
the indigenous cultures of the northern Great Plains.
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A World of Variety
Posted Fri, February 20, 2009 - 7:23 PM
language
I'm going to start a new series of posts, intended to celebrate the world's diversity of language. It's turned out to be depressingly
difficult to find online resources for even moderately obscure languages, never mind the myriad of little-known, inaccessible, or dying languages.
The most common information seems to be word lists, a few phrases, links to dictionaries, exhortations to buy things, two or three second badly
compressed audio clips, and lots and lots of blinking tags and
broken links that make up for in enthusiasm what they lack in scope and rigor. But it's certainly better than nothing, as chasing down
articles in scholarly linguistic journals is neither productive or enlightening if your interest, as mine, is in the full impression
of how a language is used in everyday speech.
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