Native American Languages

Before 1492 the Americas had over 150 different families, 2,000 languages

Prevailing hypotheses on NA origins

All NA peoples derive from North Asia

Most areas of the Americas populated by 10,000 BC

Last wave was Eskimo-Aleut (4,000 years ago)

Next to last wave was Na-Dene (Athabaskan, Tlingit, Eyak)

The other groups may or may not descend from a single wave

            (Greenberg groups them all into an AMERIND superfamily)

NA languages most diverse on the Pacific coast, from Alaska to California

NA languages today

More than half NA languages are extinct, many others are endangered

Largest surviving languages in Latin America:

Quechua (Inca)--7 million

Guarani (Paraguay) 4 million

Mayan languages --over 1 million

Nahuatl (Aztec)--over 1 million

In the US  (only about 20 NA languages are thriving)

Navaho--150,000; Cherokee--15,000; Papago 20,000,

Hopi--several thousand, Crow--8thou; Lakhota--4,000

Eskimo lang's--several thousand, Cree--a few thousand.

NATIVE AMERICAN LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE IN MODERN AMERICA

1. Toponyms -most state names, many town, river, mountain names are NA

2. Names after animals, natural features:  Bear creek, Buffalo NY

3. hundreds of vocabulary words:

bayou (Choctaw); savanna (Taino); pampas ; jerky  (Quechua);

potato (Taino); hurricane (Carib); tomato, chocolate (Aztec);

blizzard, shark are probably Native American

--many NA words came into English through Jamestown and Massachusetts colonies: squash from 'asquatasquash = eaten raw, succotash = grain of corn, skunk, chipmunk, racoon, moose, opossum, persimmon, sassafras, hickory, wampum, toboggan, wigwam, tomahawk, papoose, squaw, powwow (holy man).  

   Yankee <-Algonquin pronunciation of English.

Podunk--(Algonquian) an isolated part of land

muckamuck --(Chinook) important chief

caucus - (Algonquian) meeting

4. New semantically vivid compound words:   rattlesnake, june bug, red cedar, bloodroot, chokecherry, sugar maple, peanut, firewater, bullfrog, catfish.

5. New idioms:  going on the warpath, scalp hunting, paleface, burying the hatchet, smoking the peace pipe, Great Spirit, Happy Hunting Ground.