Jennifer Hawkinson
November 18, 2014
Stage 5: Language Autobiography;
Algonquian Language

A Native American Language

Language of any kind helps us to define or shape our culture or society. For thousands of years, we have used language as a way to communicate, trade, or to pass along our history with stories and legends. We have seen how language can grow and develop, and how it is affected by other cultures or societies. Language is always adapting just like everything else where it will flourish in some cases and disappear in others. Native Americans, such as the Powhatan Confederacy of Virginia, once thrived along the Hudson Bay area. This Confederacy consisted of twenty-eight to thirty-two different tribes, who all spoke a dialect form of the Algonquian Language.
The Algonquian Language originated from the Algic Language. This language bade consisted of forty-four different sub-languages, all of which fell under the sub-language Algonquian except for two (Thompson, 2014). The Algic Language originated from Proto-Algonquian, which is the original form of all Algonquian Languages, and dates back 3,000 years (Thompson, 2014). Currently the origins of where this language first originated from or how it came about are unknown. Europeans became the first to encounter this language around 1584, when settlers began arriving in the New World (Rountree, 2014).
The Algonquian Language consisted of several different sub-languages; to which different forms were spoken; dependent on the region a tribe was located. The Powhatan Confederacy spoke an Eastern form of the language, which consisted of at least fifteen different dialects (Rountree, 2014). Like the English Language today, you have your northern English that would sound proper to persons from the south who speak a southern English, and vice versa. Records that link dialects, or that state which languages were dialects, were never recorded and do not exist (Thompson, 2014).
Today, some of the Algonquian Language is still spoken among anyone who speaks the English Language, and he or she does not even realize it. It is not in the form of sentences or phrases but is instead single words that would be assumed as English translations of Native American words. Some examples of this include, but are not limited to, moccasins which means shoes, pecans, opossum, etc. (Thompson, 2014). There are states and cities whose name can be traced back to the Algonquian Language. These states and cities are Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Each has a meaning just as the word moccasins did. Chicago can be translated as “’place of onion’ or ‘place of bad smell’” (Thompson, 2014) ironically enough. Due to its “constant-vowel-constant structure” (Rountree, 2014), the English have adopted words like these, from the Algonquian Language.
The language has both different and similar sound system throughout the whole of the language. Vowels are both long and short, and help to distinguish between oral or nasal vowels. Constants help to distinguish voiced stops, aspirated stops, or constant clusters, if any, that are in the middle/end of a word (Thompson, 2014). Stresses and Tones of a language had very big differences, where one language would use tones and another language would use stresses. The Algonquian Language is polysynthetic, which means that it contains a high ratio of “morphemes per word” (Thompson, 2014). A very long, single word or a couple of words combined would actually equate to a sentence or phrase in English. This language also consists of nouns marked by animacy (animate/in-animate), and numbers (singular/plural). Adjectives use verbs and Verbs agree with subjects, while also belonging to different groups such as transitive or animate/in-animate objects and more (Thompson, 2014). In any language, there are many different ways to express/say functions, which show different types of structures such as direct or indirect speech acts (Mellow, 2010).
Native Americans, like the Powhatan Confederacy, lived near rivers that allowed them to trade, have a water supply, access to fish, and even warfare. It is believed that those along the river’s edge spoke similar dialects of the Algonquian Language, or that they were multilingual (Rountree, 2014). This would allow for easier communication when trading or during warfare, because of the constant contact they had with other persons or groups along the river (Rountree, 2014). Captain John Smith once wrote a sentence in his writings that was called “pidgin” (Rountree, 2014), which was used when trading between the natives and the settlers.
During wartime, the Powhatan Confederacy would kill the men of the tribe they were fighting, and take the women and children captive. As a result, the women would teach the children not only their native language/dialect, but also that of their captors’ native language. This resulted in the children being bilingual and was very common throughout Virginia. When the English began to arrive, both Powhatan (Wahunsonacock, absolute chief of the Powhatan Confederacy) and the English began to switch children, from both cultures, so they could immerse them in a new language that was foreign to both cultures (Rountree, 2014). With exchanges came tensions, which were not acted upon due to important dividends between the two cultures. It was thought that the children were being used as spies for their native cultures, but no one knows if this was the case or not (Rountree, 2014).
The Algonquian Language did not have a writing system until the seventeenth century when the English missionaries arrived. Today, the language, whether spoken by persons or groups still or extinct, has a writing system. These systems are written in the Roman alphabet with specially devised syllabics such as the Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing (Thompson, 2014). There are now only twenty-seven sub-languages from the Algonquian group, which can still be spoken throughout a wide region of North America. This region ranges from Central North America from the Canadian subarctic in the North, to the Eastern Seaboard, and as far South as North Carolina (Thompson, 2014).
Due to colonization over the centuries, preservation and transmission of culture and identity, this language is not being widely acquired by children. By the eighteenth century, the English culture and language was being adopted by most natives that this resulted in the Algonquian Language descent into extinction. At first, the language was reduced to “day-to-day business” (Rountree, 2014), compared to when it was used as their whole of communication. This loss of a unique language is similar to what happened in Ireland; due to lack in trying to keep the language alive. Language is “intertwined with personal relationships and culture worldview” (Mellow, 2010). The Powhatan along the rivers, who they traded with, had developed a dialect with who they shared a “face-to-face” encounter with (Mellow, 2010). Many of the Algonquian Languages are extinct, because of all the native speakers who spoke it, not passing it on or their children not learning it (Thompson, 2014). If a language is to thrive, it needs to have persons or groups who fluently speak it and are able to teach it so that others may learn and grow from it. Chomksy said, “Language is not really something you learn. Acquisition of language is something that happens to you; it’s not something you do. Learning language is something like undergoing puberty. You don’t learn to do it; you don’t do it because you see other people doing it; you are just designed to do it at a certain time (pp. 173-174)” (Chomksy, 1988). From infancy, we are always learning and growing because of the culture and language we are exposed too. We naturally learn to speak a language perfectly because of this.
Language, no matter what kind, is always changing whether it is to adapting to an always-changing culture, or going extinct because it is no longer needed or spoken. With trade, warfare, or even adaptation, the Algonquian Language was found to adjust or vary accordingly to the culture or societies need. As the English moved in the language became less needed, because of the need to communicate with the new commoners was more, so the English Language won out in the end. As natives began to adapt to the English culture, the Algonquian Language and culture diminished until some of the sub-languages and dialects were either extinct or barely spoken.

Works Cited
Chomksy, N. (1988). Language and problems of knowledge: The Magagua lectures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
LaSourd, P. (2003). TRACES OF PROTO-ALGONQUIAN *wi -la 'he,she' IN MALISEET-PASSAMAQUODDY. International Journal Of American Linguistics, 69(4), 357-370.
Mellow, J. (2010). Fostering Diversity and Minimizing Universals: Toward a Non-Colonialist Approach to Studying the Acquisition of Algonquian Languages. Native Studies Review, 19(1), 67-100.
Proulx, P. (2005). REDUPLICATION IN PROTO-ALGONQUIAN AND PROTO-CENTRAL-ALGONQUIAN. International Journal Of American Linguistics, 71(2), 193-214.
Pulla, S. (2011). A Redirection in Neo-Evolutionism?: ARetrospective Examination of the Algonquian Family Hunting Territories Debates. Histories of Anthropology Annual, (1), 170.
Rountree, H. &. (2014, May 30). Languages and Interpreteters in Early Virginia Indian Society. Retrieved from In Encyclopedia Virginia: http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Languages_and_Interpreters_in_Early_Virginia_Society
Thompson, I. (2014, September 17). Algic Language Family. Retrieved from About World Languages: http://www.aboutworldlanguages.com/algic-languages-family