# Native American language **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 21, 2002, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124 "2002-07-21T20:23:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![glass\_onion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@glass\_onion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glass_onion)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2002, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/1 "2002-07-21T20:23:59Z")
I read today that some Native American tongues have Gaelic/Celtic language influences…one that I remember being cited was Aloquin(sp?). It was reported that this may be to do with the fact that X amount of years before Colombus “discovered” the New World some irish monks had made the trip and interacted with the Natives…the story even said that one tribe had a “collective guilt” about having destroyed an entire tribe of whites which they told to some of the newcomer Spanish at the time of the Columbus invasion. Now to my question…I want to know what, if any, basis there is to the reported fact that some of these languages are related to Gaelic, or is it just the fact that they borrowed some words as English has from many other languages? Thanks ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2002, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/2 "2002-07-21T20:32:49Z")
Sounds so completely bogus to me I’m not even going to bother trying to debunk it (though I’m sure somebody else will… that’s a hint :)) I do remember reading recently though that the Navajo word for “people” is _dine_, which, as I’m sure you know, is eerily similar to the Irish _daoine_. It’s probably from an odd but completely random coincidence like this that the rumour you heard got started. ---
**Author:** ![hazel-rah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hazel-rah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hazel-rah)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2002, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/3 "2002-07-21T22:18:20Z")
That’s interesting, where did you read that? The story itself is a little strange. It’s hard to imagine that a visit by some Irish monks could have a lasting impact on the language of the Native Americans without having a similar impact on many other aspects of their lives. As you seem to recognize, a few word borrowings don’t make two languages related. Languages are related when they descend from a common language. If an Amerind language was a creole of Amerind and Celtic it would be pretty obvious. -fh ---
**Author:** ![Lodrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@Lodrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lodrain)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/4 "2002-07-22T18:03:11Z")
[Here’s a link](http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm) and [here’s another](http://www.zompist.com/proto.htm) describing the possibility of chance similarities in the vocabularies in languages. Y’see, we humans look for patterns naturally, even where none exist. The Sanskrit word _chakra_ and our word _wheel_ are related and even share the same meaning after thousands of years of linguistic seperation, believe it or not, but a word like the Japanese _taberu_ and our word _table_ are not. But it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing the chance overlaps in the two vocabularies mean that the two languages have a common ancestor - the jury’s still out on ‘Proto-World’, but we can safely assume that Japanese and English are not related in any meaningful way. American Indian languages have been seperated from every other group for well over ten thousand years. This ten-thousand year gap between other languages has created an enormous diversity of languages and language groups - before Europe stomped in and screwed everything up, there were more spoken languages in North America than in Europe, Asia and the Middle East combined - I heard a figure of over five thousand seperate languages, but I seriously doubt my memory. I was just thinking about that last night - I’m currently aching to study a Native American language, but can’t find much material on the Internet to help me choose which. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/5 "2002-07-22T18:50:21Z")
May I recommend the Cherokee language? Ours was the first Indian language to have an alphabet. The language is beautifully expressive, and Internet sources are plentiful. See [this site](http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/Language.asp). And [here](http://www.allthingscherokee.com/language_links.html) are some links. ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/6 "2002-07-22T20:45:16Z")
**glass onion** ,I would be very interested to see the evidence. Where did you read this? **Lodrain** , while North America was fairly diverse (especially California), it was not to the extent you have mentioned. Papua New Guinea and the surrounding islands are the most (linguistically) diverse areas on the planet. Incidentally, what does _taberu_ mean in Japanese? As far as learning a NA language, you should definitely try one of the Wakashan languages of the northern Washinton/southern British Columbia area. Morphological and phonetic complexity like you wouldn’t believe! ---
**Author:** ![Lodrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@Lodrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lodrain)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/7 "2002-07-22T20:47:55Z")
Ooh, cool. Thanks, **Libertarian**. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/8 "2002-07-22T20:58:27Z")
“Aloquin” is probably “Algonquin” – which is a catchall term used for several related dialects in the Algonquian or Algonkian family. There seems to be some (but nowhere near conclusive) evidence for several pre-Viking visits to the New World, including St. Brendan the Navigator (the Irish monks) and Prince Madoc of Gwynedd (Welsh). However, all the folderol suggesting a connection between Celtic languages and Native American ones is almost certainly based on false cognates and wishful thinking. (On the fifth planet of a F7 star in the Andromeda Galaxy, there is a native race that communicates by sound and which refers to a flying creature that tends to feed on open water as a “duhk” – clearly a borrowing from English!) **Lodrain** ’s figures are a bit extreme – anthropologists studying Native Americans tended to classify every dialect as a separate language, but nonetheless, though nowhere as complex as the Caucasus or New Guinea, a linguistic map of North America would be significantly more piebald than one of Europe or Eastern Asia. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/9 "2002-07-22T21:40:18Z")
It’s also worth pointing out that European and American languages enjoyed a lightning-fast exchange of vocabulary when the two “officially” met after 1492. There were thousands of objects, places, and concepts exchanged in short order; many words had no translation (“tobacco”) and therefore quickly rooted in the other language, often with wild changes in pronunciation. American languages were mostly unwritten, and at least as far as English goes, there was nothing even close to standardization in spelling in the 1600s, much less the spelling of words the English could barely pronounce to begin with. Furthermore, I’ve never seen a Seventeenth Century “How to Speak Wampanoag” book, so I’m curious to know how linguists can arrive at the conclusion that an American language was influenced by another language prior to the pollution after the accepted dates of contact. In my own personal research experience, I’ve noticed that by the 1660s a large number of the local Indian words found their way into regular (New England) English. By the late 1700s, a number of Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi Indians were taking names which were, if I can coin a term, Algonquianizations of French words. Thus, many early American [treaties](http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/Toc.htm) with tribes contain signatures which are French nouns, converted into Algonquian dialects (many of which did not use the “v” or “l” phoenemes and so were replaced), and painstakingly spelled out phonetically in English. Some of you French speakers might have some fun with that, I suppose… If you find any good ones, let me know. Anyway, I think that it’s highly unlikely that pre-1492 linguistic influences would even be identifiable in light of the much stronger influences that American languages experienced afterward. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/10 "2002-07-22T21:51:13Z")
Cherokee gave you “yankee”. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![starfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/87869e/32.png) [@starfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/starfish)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/11 "2002-07-23T00:09:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ruadh \* > \*\* > I do remember reading recently though that the Navajo word for “people” is _dine_, \*\* Cannibals 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Squish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Squish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squish)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/12 "2002-07-23T00:34:41Z")
The Navajo word for ‘people’ is Dine (pronounced something like Dih-neh), which is their word for themselves. The part of the story in the OP which reeks of utter manure is: “the story even said that one tribe had a “collective guilt” about having destroyed an entire tribe of whites which they told to some of the newcomer Spanish at the time of the Columbus invasion”. Columbus landed in San Salvador; the possible landing sites of the Irish and Welsh are either maritime Canada or New England. That’s quite a distance, especially in the 15th/16th century. ---
**Author:** ![Lodrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@Lodrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lodrain)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/13 "2002-07-23T00:57:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ol’Gaffer \* > **Incidentally, what does _taberu_ mean in Japanese?** It means ‘eat’. I was pointing out that it has no relationship whatsoever to our _table_, which could have changed into ‘eat’ over time, if Japanese and English were somehow related and then seperated over time. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/14 "2002-07-23T01:17:23Z")
More specifically, _taberu_ is the “dictionary form” of the verb with the root _tabe_. “Dictionary form” is that form of the verb under which you’ll find it listed in the dictionary. For example, to look up _tabemasu_ one must know that _masu_ is the verb ending and that the actual word you’re looking up is _taberu_. Essentially, the dictionary form is the familiar form, “familiar” in the sense that’s the form one uses when speaking with others of the same social rank. The -masu form is that used when speaking to someone higher up the social ladder. ---
**Author:** ![Opus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/858c86/32.png) [@Opus1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opus1)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/15 "2002-07-23T03:25:44Z")
Sofa King wrote: > [@](#): > > Furthermore, I’ve never seen a Seventeenth Century “How to Speak Wampanoag” book, I have! It was from an intro to colonial U.S. history class. Written by some Christian minister who had studied the Wampanoag language for the purposes of effective conversion, and who compiled a phrase book and dictionary of the language. Anyone remember any more details about this? ---
**Author:** ![Opus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/858c86/32.png) [@Opus1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opus1)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/16 "2002-07-23T03:32:32Z")
Sofa King wrote: > [@](#): > > Furthermore, I’ve never seen a Seventeenth Century “How to Speak Wampanoag” book, I have! It was from an intro to colonial U.S. history class. Written by some Christian minister who had studied the Wampanoag language for the purposes of effective conversion, and who compiled a phrase book and dictionary of the language. Anyone remember any more details about this? ---
**Author:** ![Opus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/858c86/32.png) [@Opus1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opus1)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/17 "2002-07-23T03:41:13Z")
Damn lying board told me it timed out! In fact, I’m pretty sure I already had 700 posts, so it didn’t even double count this one. Weird… ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/18 "2002-07-23T17:09:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lodrain \* > \*\* > > It means ‘eat’. I was pointing out that it has no relationship whatsoever to our _table_, which could have changed into ‘eat’ over time, if Japanese and English were somehow related and then seperated over time. \*\* That is interesting as _table_ would probably surface as something close to _taberu_ by a native speaker of Japanese. I’m pretty sure that Japanese only allows nasals at the end of a syllable. In which case, the /u/ is epenthesized to move the /l/ to the syllable onset position. This coupled with the fact that an English /l/ would be approximated to the Japanese /r/ and you get table -\> taberu! As far as your original point, I fully agree. Thanks for providing those threads. Interesting stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/19 "2002-07-23T17:55:23Z")
Thank you, **Opus1**! There’s a big ol’ hole on my bookshelf just waiting for that puppy. If I find out more about it I’ll let you know. ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124/20 "2002-07-23T18:15:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ol’Gaffer \* > \*\* > > That is interesting as _table_ would probably surface as something close to _taberu_ by a native speaker of Japanese. I’m pretty sure that Japanese only allows nasals at the end of a syllable. In which case, the /u/ is epenthesized to move the /l/ to the syllable onset position. This coupled with the fact that an English /l/ would be approximated to the Japanese /r/ and you get table -\> taberu!\*\* Arggh. The hamsters ate my first attempt. The word is actually _teburu_. In Japanese, /a/ is always pronounced /ah/, and e is always pronounced /eh/. In addition, /u/ - pronounced /oo/ - tends to be swalled between aspirated consonants. For example, the native pronunciation of _sukiyaki_ is basically /skeeyakee/. So /u/ is the default vowel choice when Japanese confronts foreign words that have adjoining (non-nasal) consonants [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-language/120124.md?page=2)