Product Code Database
Wyandot (also Wyandotte, Wendat, Quendat or Huron) is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known as Wyandot people or Wyandotte, descended from the Tionontati. It is considered a sister to the Wendat language, spoken by descendants of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy. It was last spoken, before its revival, by members located primarily in Oklahoma, United States, and Quebec, Canada. Linguists have traditionally considered Wyandot as a dialect or modern form of Wendat, even though the two are no longer mutually intelligible.
Wyandot essentially died out as a spoken language with the death of the last native speaker in 1972, though there are now attempts at revitalization:
Significant differences between Wendat and Wyandot in diachronic phonology, pronominal prefixes, and lexicon challenge the traditional view that Wyandot is modern Wendat. History suggests the roots of this language are complex; the ancestors of the Wyandot were refugees from various Huronian tribes who banded together to form one tribe. After being displaced from their ancestral home in Canada on Georgian Bay, the group traveled south, first to Ohio and later to Kansas and Oklahoma. As many members of this group were Petun, some scholars have suggested that Wyandot is more influenced by Petun than by its descent from Wendat.
The work of Barbeau was used by linguist Craig Kopris to reconstruct Wyandot; he developed a grammar and dictionary of the language. This work represents the most comprehensive research done on the Wyandot language as spoken in Oklahoma just prior to its extinction (or its Dormant language as modern tribal members refer to it).
is placed in parentheses because it appears as an [[allophone]] of in nearly all cases, but that cannot always explain its presence. The presence of a single voiced [[stop|plosive]], , contrasting with the voiceless stop , makes Wyandot unusual among Iroquoian languages, as it is the only one with a phonemic voicing distinction. The sound is pronounced as rather than , according to researchers who phonetically transcribed directly from fluent speakers and described it as "corresponding to the English ''r''" and as "the smooth English sound, never vibrant." The Wyandot and are both cognate with in other Northern Iroquoian languages. Although the two largely appear to be in [[free variation]], they clearly contrast in some cases (as in the [[minimal pairs]] da and na ). The ambiguity of the relationship between and seems to indicate that the two are in the process of a phonemic split that was not yet complete by the early 20th century.
Another unique feature of Wyandot is the presence of the voiced fricative , creating an - contrast, but there is no corresponding - contrast. The phoneme also has no voiced counterpart.
Consonants may appear in clusters. Word-initial consonant clusters can be up to three consonants long, medial clusters up to four consonants long, and final clusters up to two consonants long.
| +Wyandot vowels recovering the sound system ! !align=center | Front vowel !align=center | Back vowel |
Other analysis of the same Barbeau data suggests that vowel length is contrastive in Wyandot, like in other Iroquoian languages.
| + Wyandot Orthography |
Wendat use a similar orthography, with some differences. Although based on the 17th-century orthography of the Jesuit missionary, the current orthography no longer uses the Greek letters theta for , χ for , iota subscript for , or ȣ (or 8) for and . Pre-nasalization of stops is indicated by (e.g., ). Nasal vowels are indicated as in French by (e.g., , ). To disambiguate nasal vowels from oral vowels followed by /n/, the latter have diaeresis over the vowel (e.g., , ). Glottal stops are written with an apostrophe. The fricative /ʃ/ is written as . Consonantal allophones are not explicitly indicated.
Linguistic work is also being done on the closely related Wendat. The anthropologist John Steckley was reported in 2007 as being "the sole speaker" (non-native) of Wendat. Several Wendat scholars have master's degrees in Wendat language and have been active as linguists in the Wendat community in Quebec. In Wendake, Quebec, the First Nations people are working on a revival of Wendat language and culture. The language is being introduced in adult classes and into the village primary school. The Wendat linguist Megan Lukaniec has been instrumental in helping to create curriculum, infrastructure, and materials for Wendat language programs.
The Wyandot language is used in the television series Barkskins.
|
|
