Central Yupik is the most spoken Native American language in Alaska with 10,000 speakers. Many Native American Indian tribes use the word for "people" as the Thats out of 350 total spoken languages in the country. Contrary to common misconceptions, Native American languages didnt originate from a single protolanguage, as the Indo-European family did. In the Age of COVID-19, Native Languages Are Proving Their Longevity and Resilience, Special Offer on Antivirus Software From HowStuffWorks and TotalAV Security, Native North American Languages Spoken at Home in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2006 to 2010, "Navajo" Is the Most Common Native Language, but the Name Is Not Totally Accurate, The Reported Number of "Native Speakers" Can Be Deceiving, People Are Preserving Native Languages in Many Different Ways, Overarching Labels on Native Languages Don't Represent the Variety Within Categories, In the Age of COVID-19, Native Languages Are Proving Their Longevity and Resilience, 'Din bizaad' [or Dineh bizad, in an alternate spelling]. Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically? Sadly, Romance languages have nothing to do with romancing someone. We dig into some scientific studies on bilingualism to separate fact from fiction. Their guns and horses gave them a major advantage as did their immunity. Most of the population was in the Andean region, where there was also a powerful Indian empire, that of the Incas. Mesoamerica (Mexico and northern Central America) had a much larger Indian populationestimated at about 20 millionwhich spoke at least 80 languages. Steph is a writer, lindy hopper, and astrologer. But even if its imperfect, the task of linguistic genealogy can unveil the richness of the Americas native languages. and similarly in Canada, 133,000 people reported speaking an Indigenous language at home in the 2011 census. , who published multiple works on the topic in the 1980s. European conquest and colonization ultimately led to the disappearance of many American Indian language groups and to radical changes in the groups that survived. Raoul Zamponi (2017) 'First-person n and second-person m in Native America: a fresh look'. But over the course of the next 100 years, up to 90% of the indigenous population was killed through disease, war and enslavement. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.). This is not the case for the Amerindian language family, which is not properly a family at all because the languages are not related. Powell, John W. (1891). Its hard to get exact numbers, and accounting for them all is an ongoing process, but its clear theres been a steep decline in the past few centuries. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The above list gives a good overall picture of the indigenous languages that are spoken, especially because getting exact numbers for the smaller languages can be difficult. Macro-Mayan includes Mayan, Totonacan, MixeZoquean, and sometimes Huave. Crow and Sioux are both Siouan languages, but they are mutually unintelligible. His belief in these large language families was based on comparing simple vocabulary across many languages and finding similarities. The vast majority of living speakers of an Amerindian language live in Mexico and South America. And while were at it, what is an official language, anyway? As a result, many relationships between languages and language families have not been determined and some of those relationships that have been proposed are on somewhat shaky ground. Many have the consonant known as the glottal stop. Dakhtiyapi is the Dakota language spoken by nearly 19,000 people. Linguistics classification problems in South America. The Bella Coola Language. The U.S. Census Bureau published a compilation of four years worth of data in 2011 to paint a picture of the state of Native North American languages. Bright, William. Their Quechuan languages spread beyond their original homeland in the southern Peruvian highlands and resulted in the extinction or reduction of many other Indian tongues. According to UNESCO, most of the Indigenous languages of the Americas are critically endangered, and many are dormant (without native speakers but with a community of heritage-language users) or entirely extinct. In this article, we cover the history and usage of the various Native American languages, and if youre interested in learning one yourself we share some resources for you to check out. "Related languages can be found on the Pacific Coast (Tolowa, Hupa) and in Canada and Alaska. The Navajo language, for instance, is the most spoken Native American language today, with nearly 170,000 speakers. For convenience, the following list of language families is divided into three sections based on political boundaries of countries. Indigenous languages once flourished in the United States. Quechuan is one of these: it is estimated that this group of closely related dialects has several million speakers in Ecuador, Peru, and parts of Bolivia and Argentina. The highly elaborate dances that accompanied the oral tradition are frequently also gone. "We should be careful with thinking of 'speaker' as a neutral term," he says. This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 16:24. Over a thousand known languages were spoken by various peoples in North and South America prior to their first contact with Europeans. Today, preservation is the most important task among researchers of the Americas native languages. The pronouns for I and you, for example, were a piece of evidence. America north of Mexico, taken as a whole, had about 300 distinct languages, spoken by a population estimated at about 1.5 million. Steward (Ed.). [83] Still other proposals are almost unanimously rejected by specialists (for example, Amerind). It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isn't it? Two large (super-) family proposals, Penutian and Hokan, look particularly promising. Shes also a language enthusiast who grew up bilingual and had an early love affair with books. In a personal letter to A. L. Kroeber he wrote (Sapir 1918):[89]. While the report, titled "Native North American Languages Spoken at Home in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2006 to 2010," made headlines and drew attention to the diversity of languages spoken among Native North Americans, it didn't illustrate the often-overlooked nuances between indigenous speakers. ", The linguistic nuances of native languages are unique as well. Fabre, Alain. In short, even though the Indian population north of Mexico is actually increasing, most of the aboriginal languages are slowly dying out. As mentioned, all it takes to be called an Amerindian language is to have been spoken in the New World before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Sletcher, Michael, 'North American Indians', in Will Kaufman and Heidi Macpherson, eds.. Sturtevant, William C. (1984). Follow her culinary and cultural experiences on Twitter. As one example, Native Languages of the Americas is a nonprofit dedicated to the survival of Native American languages, particularly through the use of Internet technology. Its website features a comprehensive collection of materials and online resources about Native American culture and language. Her copywriting business takes her around the world and she is excited to share language tips as part of the Lingoda team. Others were far more restricted in area and numbers of speakers. In Brazil, friars learned and promoted the Tupi language. (1950). A rough estimation is that there were more than 2000 different native american languages before European colonisation. She believes that learning how to order a beer in a new language reveals a lot about local culture. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight more. "All these languages are related historically (and related as well to Navajo) think, for example, of English and German or Spanish and French. The supposed "n/m I/you" pattern has attracted attention even from those linguists who are normally critical of such long-distance proposals. Unless there's context that would imply otherwise nobody would use just "theory" to mean "scientific theory". "So it is a testament to the resilience of generations of Navajos that there is still a Navajo language being spoken today," Webster continues. Through resistance and resilience, over 150 indigenous languages remain in North America. With all of that said, the movement to reclaim and preserve Native American languages has been underway since the Civil Rights era. Others are considered isolates and cannot even be clearly classified. "They have asserted their sovereignty and the responsibility of keeping their people safe in the face of this global pandemic; the value of elder speakers of the language, of those with knowledge, is often quite important certainly for Navajos that I know and protecting their elders, protecting their relatives, is for many a priority. Specialists say that the entire methodology he follows is flawed, and examples like the pronouns above are not statistically significant enough to prove or disprove anything. A second individual genome sequenced from material found at the site and dated to 17,000 years ago revealed a similar genetic structure. "Navajo is a Southern Athabaskan language and a part of the larger Athabaskan or Dene language family (other members of the Southern Athabaskan branch include all the Apache languages)," Anthony K. Webster, professor in the University of Texas at Austin Department of Anthropology and Department of Linguistics and affiliate faculty in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, says via email. [9] In many Spanish colonies, Spanish missionaries often learned local languages and culture in order to preach to the natives in their own tongue and relate the Christian message to their Indigenous religions. Mason, J. Alden. Unless current trends are reversed, these endangered languages will become extinct within the . Due to the diversity of languages in North America, it is difficult to make generalizations for the region. Tup was, by the early 21st century, gradually being replaced by Portuguese, but Guaran remained an important second language of modern Paraguay, and an extensive folk literature has been created. Number of speakers: 169,000 Size of tribe: 300,000 members Distinctive features: This is the most spoken Native American language in the US. Colombia delegates local Indigenous language recognition to the department level according to the Colombian Constitution of 1991. In reality, there were perhaps a thousand languages spoken in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans - about 250 in the present territory of the United States alone. "The largest that is the one with the most speakers is Western Apache and that's spoken in San Carlos and White Mountain (in Arizona), for example. The US Marine Corps recruited Navajo men, who were established as code talkers during World War II. It has long been observed that a remarkable number of Native American languages have a pronominal pattern with first-person singular forms in n and second-person singular forms in m. (Compare first-person singular m and second-person singular t across much of northern Eurasia, as in English me and thee, Spanish me and te, and Hungarian -m and -d.) This pattern was first noted by Alfredo Trombetti in 1905. "Recent papers on the language and works produced by the community use the name 'Din bizaad' [or Dineh bizad, in an alternate spelling]: 'people's language.' There are initiatives and language schools designed to preserve and revive these languages. The Native Languages of the Americas nonprofit estimates about 25 to 30, in addition to uncategorized languages and language isolates (which have no family). "5 Things to Know About Native American Languages Spoken in the 21st Century" Names for Native American Indian languages can be confusing. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Several families have unique traits, such as the inverse number marking of the Tanoan languages, the lexical affixes of the Wakashan, Salishan and Chimakuan languages, and the unusual verb structure of Na-Den. Native children were forcibly removed from their families and punished for speaking their native tongues. Theyre one of the largest language groups, and theyre spread all across the globe. "Lakota has several robust language revitalization efforts (Lakota Language Project, Lakota Language Consortium), which are separate from Dakota revitalization (Dakota Language Project) in coordination with Carleton College [in Minnesota].". After hundreds of years of battles, wars and atrocities, including the systematic, state-sanctioned genocide of between 9,000 and 16,000 California Indians from 1846 to 1873, the condition of the Native American population was a shell of its former self. [2] Nonetheless, there are indications that some of the recognized families are related to each other, such as widespread similarities in pronouns (e.g., n/m is a common pattern for 'I'/'you' across western North America, and ch/k/t for 'I'/'you'/'we' is similarly found in a more limited region of South America). It cannot be determined that these languages actually existed or that the few recorded words are actually of known or unknown languages. ", "One can hear the language on the radio on, for example, the Navajo Nation radio station, as well," Webster says. One of these extant languages, the dialect of Cuzco, Peru, was the principal language of the Inca empire. EskimoAleut languages (Inuktitut & Inuinnaqtun), Athabaskan languages (Dane-zaa, Slavey, Chipewyan (Denesuline)/Sayisi, Carrier (Dakelh), & Sekani). Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Amerindian language family is a general term for the languages spoken in North and South America before contact with Europeans started in the 15th century. "With that caution in mind, the language is used primarily in the American Southwest and on and around the Navajo Nation (which covers parts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico)," Webster says. Some languages have nasalized vowels similar to those of French. Sherzer, Joel. "Manual de las lenguas indgenas sudamericanas, I-II". In the United States, the Navajo language is the most spoken Native American language, with more than 200,000 speakers in the Southwestern United States. While similar words across languages can be a valid part of an argument for grouping languages together, Greenbergs work has been. In the pre-Columbian era, the American Indian languages covered both continents and the islands of the West Indies. "Navajo" Is the Most Common Native Language, but the Name Is Not Totally Accurate. Indigenous peoples have managed to preserve and continue speaking their languages despite systematic attempts at erasure. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million Indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras. Using this method, English can be "proved" to descend from Japanese--English "mistake" sounds a little like Japanese "machigai". "And Apache is the same way because it's very close to Navajo. Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). Other sources may disagree, as there is no 100 percent accurate accounting for all of the languages in the world. Indian linguistic families of America north of Mexico. The challenges are manifold. These proliferated in the New World.[12]. Cherokee is Iroquoian, and Navajo is Athabaskan. (1979). "Sioux, as far as I know, is a historic term that covers several languages/dialects that may or may not be mutually intelligible, including Lakota and Dakota," Cornelius says. This is only a small sample of the overall chart, but the idea is that words for I often have an n sound and words for you often have an m sound. These sections correspond roughly with the geographic regions (North, Central, and South America) but are not equivalent. The list of language families, isolates, and unclassified languages below is a rather conservative one based on Campbell (1997). "Navajo is a Southern Athabaskan language and a part of the . Seventh annual report, Bureau of American Ethnology (pp. However, many of these proposals have not been fully demonstrated, or even demonstrated at all. A common misconception is that there was one Native American language. The odds of restoring many of these languages to their former glory are certainly not favorable. Most of the Yupik speakers are located in the southwestern region of Alaska. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and getting angry about things on. Yet to the Native Americans whose languages are just a few years away from extinction, the loss goes to the heart of their identity. To get an idea cut the amer. But hope can be found in the smallest things: like CLCPC leader Ronald Red Elks account of a young Comanche girl whose first word was not mother, but pia, the native equivalent. Note: Data sourced from Ethnologue. How Similar Are The Amerindian Languages? When Europeans first began to colonize the Americas in earnest, they brought diseases like smallpox and measles with them, as well as a settlement strategy that involved fighting and killing off Native Americans for their land. There were an estimated 150,000 children in boarding schools in Canada and a total of 367 boarding schools in the United States. 92). Kaufman (1994: 46) gives the following appraisal: Since the mid 1950s, the amount of published material on SA [South America] has been gradually growing, but even so, the number of researchers is far smaller than the growing number of linguistic communities whose speech should be documented. These encounters occurred between the beginning of the 11th century (with the Nordic settlement of Greenland and failed efforts in Newfoundland and Labrador) and the end of the 15th century (the voyages of Christopher Columbus). While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The situation is somewhat different in Mesoamerica and South America. Does growing up with more than one language delay cognitive development or enhance it? How Many People Speak An Amerindian Language? The top 10 languages all have hundreds of thousands of speakers, while the bottom hundred are in danger of dying out completely within a generation or two. A boarding school system was established to isolate Native children and assimilate them into the dominant culture of the Christian religion and the English language. In J. Linguists are trying to do their best to reconstruct the evolution of languages, but theyre relying on a very incomplete set of evidence. In North America, there were an estimated 300 unique languages spoken. The several variants of Nahuatl continue to be spoken by an estimated 1.5 million people, mostly still living in central Mexico. Where Are The Amerindian Languages Spoken? Because of the devastating effects of colonialism and a relative lack of written records, determining how languages fit together in the Amerindian. languages (including Choctaw, Cherokee, Lakota, and others) in both WWI and WWII Overview Somewhere between 250 and 600 languages spoken in North America at the time of European contact In 1997 there were about 211 (175 in present U.S.) Only about 30 languages are still spoken by all generations. There are 12 languages spoken in Mexico that are among the 30 most-spoken Amerindian languages, while the United States is only home to two. A major part of linguistic work is using modern language to recreate how languages may have historically evolved. According to Webster, we ought to be cautious about throwing the term "speaker" around since there are a lot of factors affecting if, how, and why someone identifies as one. He argued that all of the indigenous languages in North and South America could fit into one of three language families: Amerind, Na-Den and Eskimo-Aleut. . Because of the devastating effects of colonialism and a relative lack of written records, determining how languages fit together in the Amerindian language family is at best speculative. "Apache actually covers a number of different languages," Webster says. Native American languages have borrowed words from Dutch, English, French, Russian, Spanish (called hispanisms), and Swedish. Prior to European colonization, it was estimated that there were between 8 and 112 million people living in the Americas. Follow activists and resources on social media: Inform yourself. There are 574 recognized Native Nations in the United States alone. In communities as small as these, most people are bilingual, and the younger people, educated in English, often have little more than a superficial command of the native idiom. In: Stoll, Gnter, Vaas, Rdiger: Voegelin, Carl F.; & Voegelin, Florence M. (1965). Of the 25 million Amerindian language speakers, about half a million live in either the United States or Canada. Before the arrival of the Europeans, languages of this group were spoken by a large and widespread population. Among the reasons, of course, is racism towards Navajos and the devaluing of Navajo language and culture over the decades. Zepeda, Ofelia; Hill, Jane H. (1991). languages." Similar terms appear in many other international human rights treaties. Campbell also showed that several of the languages that have the contrast today did not have it historically and stated that the pattern was largely consistent with chance resemblance, especially when taking into consideration the statistic prevalence of nasal consonants in all the pronominal systems of the world. (1929). Central and North American languages. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large number of language isolates), as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified because of a lack of data. Here is a list of the top 10 indigenous languages spoken in the United States according to the US census: Lets look at the top 4 most-spoken Native American languages and learn some basic phrases from each. Mercury Series; Canadian Ethnology Service (No. Some proposals are viewed by specialists in a favorable light, believing that genetic relationships are very likely to be established in the future (for example, the Penutian stock). Din Bizaad is the Navajo language. Looking at families rather than individual languages, he found a rate of 30% of families/protolanguages in North America, all on the western flank, compared to 5% in South America and 7% of non-American languages though the percentage in North America, and especially the even higher number in the Pacific Northwest, drops considerably if Hokan and Penutian, or parts of them, are accepted as language families. Though most of these languages are on the verge of dying out, some are holding on. There are approximately 296 spoken (or formerly spoken) Indigenous languages north of Mexico, 269 of which are grouped into 29 families (the remaining 27 languages are either isolates or unclassified). [3][4] The most widely spoken Indigenous languages are Southern Quechua (spoken primarily in southern Peru and Bolivia) and Guarani (centered in Paraguay, where it shares national language status with Spanish), with perhaps six or seven million speakers apiece (including many of European descent in the case of Guarani). An endangered language is one that is likely to become extinct in the near future. Enduring Voices, a program of Living Tongues, has done things like provide the appropriate training and technology to the Winnemem Wintu, so they could compile video and audio recordings in their language. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Despite the violence of colonization and assimilation, many indigenous peoples in North America have successfully preserved their languages. The, all have hundreds of thousands of speakers, while the bottom hundred are, Top 10 Amerindian Languages By Number Of Speakers. Thats more than all of Europe has combined, he added. In. In the United States and Canada, there were systematic efforts by the state to suppress native cultures and destroy native languages.