#endangeredlanguagechallenge

[dystonia-linguist]

Endangered Language #2 - Mising

Mising is spoken in the Assam state of India by approximately 517,000 people. It is part of the Tani branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Relatives include Damu and Bori. In Assam, the official language is Assamese, with Bengali and Bodo also spoken in the region.

History

The Mishing people have a history of colonization in the area by the British. They migrated from the plains of Northern China to Assam, but it is not known exactly when due to them keeping an oral tradition. Currently, there is an autonomy movement by the Mishing people in Assam. In 2009, there was also an organization formed to create a separate homeland in Upper Assam. Much of the community adopted the official language of Assamese, rather than speaking Mising.

Status

The language is developing (5). Education, from sources, seem to be in the official language of Assamese, rather than in Mising. Outside of the Mising community, there seems to be some revitalization efforts. Resources such as grammars, sociolinguistics profiles, and educational videos exist about the language. Much of the videos are intended for learning the language. There are also English-Mising dictionaries available online.

Source / Source / Source / Source

[practicingtheliberalarts]

Endangered Language Challenge: Catawba

From wikipedia:

Catawba (/kəˈtɔːbə/; Katapa [kataːpa]) is one of two Eastern Siouan languages of the eastern US, which together with the Western Siouan languages formed the Siouan language family.

The last native speaker of Catawba died before 1960.[1]Red Thunder Cloud, apparently an impostor born Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West, claimed to speak the language until he died in 1996 (Goddard 2000). The Catawba tribe is now working to revive the Catawba language.

From The Catawba Indian Nation’s website:

The Catawba Indians have lived on their ancestral lands along the banks of the Catawba River dating back at least 6000 years. Before contact with the Europeans it is believed that the Nation inhabited most of the Piedmont area of South Carolina, North Carolina and parts of Virginia. Early colonial estimates of the Catawba population when settlers arrived are between 15,000-25,000.

Early Catawbas lived in villages which were surrounded by a wooden palisade or wall. There was a large council house in the village as well as a sweat lodge, homes, and an open plaza for meetings, games, and dances. The homes were rounded on top and made of bark. The dwellings were small with extended families living in a single structure. Catawbas were farmers. They planted crops like corn and squash along the banks of the river. They also fished and hunted. The Catawbas were a large and powerful group and waged war with neighboring tribes, especially the Cherokee.

First contact with the Catawbas was recorded in 1540 when the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto marched his troops through the Piedmont while headed west looking for gold. There was little contact between the Nation and early settlers because the new colonies were barely surviving. Once the Virginia colony of Jamestown and the Carolina colony of Charles Town became more established this changed.

The tribal people called themselves yeh is-WAH h’reh, meaning “people of the river.” The colonists who came to trade began calling all the tribes along the Catawba River Valley by the name Catawba. By the late 17th century, trade began having a major impact on the Catawba society. The Catawba traded deerskins to the Europeans for goods such as muskets, knives, kettles and cloth. The Catawba villages became a major hub in the trade system between the Virginia traders and the Carolina traders.

Settlers began to move into the Piedmont during the 18th century. The Nation always carried a philosophy of brotherly love and peace when it came to the settlers. This did not serve them well though because the settlers brought disease with them. In 1759, smallpox swept through the Catawba villages for a fourth time in a century bringing the population of the Nation to less than 1,000 by 1760. Colonists believed the Nation was dying out.

Catawba warriors were known as the fiercest in the land. The Nation claimed at least eleven other tribes as enemies. Leaders of the state of South Carolina knew this and kept relations with the Nation friendly. King Hagler was chief from 1750 to 1763. He is remembered as a friend to the English but also a firm defender of the rights of his people. The Nation’s friendship with the English helped both sides. The colonist received protection from other tribes that may try to threaten them and the Nation received supplies that aided in their survival. During the Revolutionary War, the Catawba aligned with the patriots and fought with them against England to help them gain their independence. In 1763 the Catawbas received title to 144,000 acres from the King of England. It was hard for the Nation to protect the land from colonists and eventually they began renting land to settlers. The first tenant was Thomas Spratt who leased several thousand acres of farmland.

Eventually the settlers who had leased land from the Nation wanted the land for themselves. They put pressure on South Carolina to negotiate with the Nation. This was during the Removal Period when many tribes were being moved west. In order to avoid this, the Nation and South Carolina negotiated the Treaty at Nations Ford. The treaty stipulated that the Catawbas relinquish to the State of South Carolina their 144,000 acres of land. In return, South Carolina promised the Nation a new tract of land in a less populated area and to pay the Catawbas money. By 1847, South Carolina Governor David Johnson said, “They are, in effect, dissolved.” However, that was not the end of the Catawbas. References: Merrell, James. The Catawbas. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.

Again from Wikipedia:

Terminated as a tribe by the federal government in 1959, the Catawba Indian Nation had to reorganize to reassert their sovereignty and treaty rights. In 1973 they established their tribal enrollment and began the process of regaining federal recognition. In 1993 their federal recognition was re-established, along with a $50 million settlement by the federal government and state of South Carolina tor their longstanding land claims. The tribe was also officially recognized by the state of South Carolina in 1993. Their headquarters are at Rock Hill, South Carolina.As of 2006, the population of the Catawba Nation has increased to about 2600, most in South Carolina, with smaller groups in Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio, and elsewhere. The Catawba Reservation (34°54′17″N 80°53′01″W), located in two disjoint sections in York County, South Carolina east of Rock Hill, reported a 2010 census population of 841 inhabitants. The Catawban language, which is being revived, is part of the Siouan family (Catawban branch).

[linguisten]

Please join lingblr’s first Endangered Languages Challenge in the week of August 5 through 11. 

For details, see  https://blog.linguisten.de/post/186612011163/endangeredlanguagechallenge

[dystonia-linguist]

Endangered Language Challenge Day 1 - Mansi

Also known as Vogul or Maansi, it belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. It is most closely related to Hungarian and Khanty, but other notable relatives include Finnish, Livonian, and Estonian. According to a 1989 census, about 3,100 people spoke the language in Russia. 

Where and who?

The language is spoken along the Ob river and areas around in Russia by the Mansi people. They live in one of the autonomous regions, Tyumen.

Endangerment

Central Mansi is recorded as being threatened (6b). The Mansi people have an estimated population of 12,269 as of the 2010 census. They have a long history with the Russian Empire, being under more Soviet and Russian control than their Khanty counterparts, with whom they also have a lot of shared history with.

The Soviet government forced people to only speak Russian at home, solely teaching Russian in schools, and all media being in Russian, native languages such as Mansi became endangered. 

There is evidence that the language has not lost its structural integrity due to the Russification of native tribes and former Soviet states.

Legality

The language is recognized as an official language of the autonomous state Tyumen. There is a push for teaching the language in schools within the region, but most education is done in Russian due to the large Russian population in the area. It is important to note, though, that Mansi is used in education. 

Documentation? Resources?

There are grammars about Mansi, albeit few and far between. There are also teaching materials due to the push in Mansi education. 

Tech resources

Eastern Mansi Grammar

Mansi Grammar

Source / Source / Source

[practicingtheliberalarts]

Endangered Language Challenge: Catawba

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000507&slug=4019504

‘Last' Catawba-language speaker not really of tribe, linguist says

The man cited as the last native speaker of the Catawba Indian language and praised as a preservationist of the tribe's culture was not Catawba at all, a Smithsonian Institution linguist says.

Chief Red Thunder Cloud, who died in 1996, had Rhode Island and Maryland forebears and not the South Carolina tribal roots he claimed, said Ives Goddard, who runs the Smithsonian ethnology department.

Still, he said, Red Thunder Cloud contributed to understanding and protecting native cultures, particularly the Catawba language, which tribal leaders have struggled to preserve.

"Red Thunder Cloud's accomplishment in becoming a speaker of Catawba puts him outside the class of ordinary impostors," Goddard wrote in an article released Friday by the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.

"He made a contribution, there is no question about it," Goddard said. "He did field work on this native language. . . . He had papers on it that we hope someday to have access to. I wouldn't pass judgment on the guy."

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/14/nyregion/red-thunder-cloud-76-dies-and-the-catawba-tongue-with-him.html

Red Thunder Cloud, a member of the Catawba nation who was steeped in the history of American Indians, died Monday in Worcester, Mass., apparently taking to the grave the last human link to the ancient language of his people. Mr. Thunder Cloud, who was 76, died in St. Vincent's Hospital after a stroke, friends said. Mr. Thunder Cloud was also known as Carlos Westez and lived in Northbridge, Mass. He was a singer, dancer and storyteller and earned money by selling his own line of teas from herbs that he collected in the woods around his home.

"It's always sad when the last living speaker of a language dies," Carl Teeter, emeritus professor of linguistics at Harvard University, said on Friday. "There were once about 500 languages in North America. About a hundred are still spoken, and half of them are spoken by older people."

He said the Catawba language, like others, had died off because of prejudice. Not so long ago, he said, Americans who spoke Indian languages "weren't treated too well." Dr. Teeter described Catawba, an oral language with no written form, as related to the Sioux family of languages. He said the similarity indicated that there may have been considerable movement among Indian tribes hundreds of years ago.

[practicingtheliberalarts]

[practicingtheliberalarts]

Endangered Language Challenge: Catawba

The Catawba Language Project

Creating the Catawba Language Project

Early 20th-century sketch of the Catawba language

Blumer Collection on the Catawba Nation

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