Dead Language Brought Back to Life
A piece in the Washington Post tells a story of the rebirth of a dead Native American language. Ken Custalow, a member of the Mattaponi tribe, was presented with the opportunity to learn Virginia Algonquian, which likely has not been in usage for 200 years, according to one linguist.
Researching it was not an easy task. The best source was a list of Indian words and their meanings compiled by a Jamestown colonist in the 1600s. But it had been recopied by some of the 17th century's most incompetent scribes. Their N's looked like A's, which looked like U's, and they had a serious problem with spelling. The Algonquian word for "ants" had been mislabeled as "aunts," and the word for "herring" had become "hearing."
Then Hollywood entered the picture. In 2003, director Terrence Malick was preparing to film a movie about Jamestown, "The New World," which ran in theaters in late 2005 and early this year. Blair Rudes, a linguist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was hired to translate dialogue for Pocahontas's people.
Since then, many have called for reviving and teaching the language to make sure it is fully restored and never forgotten. This past summer at a powwow in Great Britain - in the town where Pocahontas was buried - Custalow recited a blessing in Algonquian to mark the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Colony.
It was the first time he had spoken his native language.
