Indigenous languages of the Americas

“ The fact that the languages of the majority of the populations are not used in the provision of services, access to justice, the educational system and other points of public contact in the different indigenous linguistic areas has a bearing on racial discrimination. The AIDPI states that “language is one of the mainstays of culture since, in particular, it is the vehicle for learning and passing on the indigenous view of the world, and indigenous knowledge and cultural values. Thus, all the languages spoken in Guatemala deserve equal respect. ”

“ The widespread use of Spanish in urban and rural areas, the labour migration of indigenous people to the cities and the partial success of bilingual education programmes have been determining factors in the decreasing vitality of indigenous languages. ”

“ In that context, provision must be made to recover and protect indigenous languages and to promote the development and use of those languages”. The Peace Agreements accept the right of the linguistic communities to exist and develop, as well as the officialization of their languages. According to the AIDPI, the officialization of the indigenous languages should have an impact on education, health, administration of justice services and on the media, in order to permit their effective regionalization. ”

“ In the specific case of Brazil, the artificial nomination in indigenous languages is explained by certain cultural and sociological phenomena observed in the western world since the 19th century. One of them was Romanticism, which valued the historical and national tradition over the aesthetic models of antiquity. One turns to the past in search of models and representations of the new nations emerging since then. In the case of Brazil, such models were the Indians of other centuries and the indigenous language spoken in the early days of conquest. ”

“ The Amazon lowlands are home to nine of Ecuador’s eleven indigenous languages. The linguistic diversity of the lowlands mirrors the sociocultural and biological diversity characteristic of the country as a whole and of the Amazon basin in particular [2] . There is no agreement on the specific number of speakers of indigenous languages in Ecuador. This is due to the lack of transparent and updated sociolinguistic data. The size of Ecuador’s indigenous population is clearly a political issue both for the government and indigenous peoples. ”

“ In this general similarity would be a strong ground-work for a theory of common origin, either indigenous or foreign, but for the fact that while the languages of America appear distinct from all other languages of the world, and do indeed in certain respects bear a general resemblance one to another throughout, yet at the same time I may safely assert that on no other continent can there be found such a multitude of distinct languages which definitely approach one another in scarcely a single word or syllable as in America. ”

“ Language ideologies in indigenous communities may also reflect beliefs concerning the relationship between local varieties and community identity, but are not necessarily homogeneous across related speech communities. For example, members of US Kumeyaay communities frequently express the belief that their dialects are each different enough to be considered distinct languages. ”

“ Today, an indigenous population of 2,000,000 is a reasonable estimate. Still, caution is needed because ethnic population—i.e. people self-claiming to be indigenous—is not equivalent to speaking population—i.e. people speaking one of the eleven indigenous languages. In such a case, the ratio between both populations depends on the ethnic group. Thus, the Cofán ethnic population is rather close to the population of speakers of A’ingae, the Cofán ethnic language, even if the rate of bilingualism among them is high ”

“ On any theory of human origin, the blended gradations of America’s widely diversified indigenous races, demand a lengthened period for their development; and equally, on any theory of the origin of languages, must time be prolonged to admit of the multiplication of mutually unintelligible dialects and tongues in the New World. It is estimated that there are nearly six hundred languages, and dialects matured into independent tongues, in Europe. ”

“ The Tupi Indian, who inhabited the coast, was mythologized. This term was a generic one used to designate the indigenous groups that spoke the Brazilian language described by Anchieta and Figueira in their grammars. These were the Tupiniquins, the Tupinambás, the Potiguaras, the Caetés, the Temiminós, the Tupis of São Vicente, etc. Meanwhile, the many Indians still living in the 19th century in Brazil were socially undervalued and discriminated against, and their languages were ignored. ”

“ Indigenous languages have become visible to the Ecuadorian Spanish-speaking society only in the last few decades thanks to the successful positioning of the indigenous movement since the mid 1980s and the principles of plurinationality and interculturality established by the 2008 Constitution. ”

“ Of course, all these texts were mainly intended for Spanish-speaking students of the language and not for the formal learning of grammar by Kichwa native speakers. These native speakers learnt to read and write in their language only in the last decades of the twentieth century through bilingual education programmes. As for the other indigenous languages, their use in written form is even more recent. ”

“ Enhance the status of indigenous languages, opening up new opportunities for them in the mass communications and cultural transmission media, strengthening such organizations as the Academy of Mayan Languages and other similar institutions ”

“ Nor could the Indians themselves have become so extraordinarily diverse except during the lapse of thousands of years. The Quichua of the cold highlands of Peru is as different from the Maya of Yucatan or the Huron of southern Canada as the Swede is from the Armenian or the Jew. The separation of one stock from another has gone so far that almost countless languages have been developed. In the United States alone the Indians have fifty-five "families" of languages and in the whole of America there are nearly two hundred such groups. ”

“ The number of native American languages is estimated by Vater, in his Linguarum Totius Orbis Index, at about five hundred. But the question forthwith arises: What shall be regarded as constituting a language? For, in the wanderings of little bands of Indian nomads, and the adoption of refugees from disbanded tribes, dialects multiply indefinitely. Nearly six hundred of such are catalogued by Mr. Bancroft, in his Native Races of the Pacific States, as spoken between Alaska and the Isthmus of Panama. ”

“ In a society where each tribe is complete in itself and at deadly enmity with all its neighbours, and where writing is unknown, language must naturally undergo very rapid, very definite change. Moreover Indians will not voluntarily speak the language of other Indians. Thus the Amazonian natives use no common tongue, and there is little in the vocabularies so far collected to explain either the origin or the relationship of the existing dialects. Tribes divided by the breadth of a narrow river speak languages that are [247] mutually unintelligible. ”

“ The Blackfeet are in reality a political and not an ethnical confederation, with at least three distinct languages, and numerous dialects spoken among their dispersed tribes. The same condition is found among the Kiawakaskaia Indians, beyond the Rocky Mountains. In the confluence of the nomad hunters to common centres of trade, speech accordingly fails them for all purposes of intercommunication; and travellers and fur-traders have long been familiar with the growth of a common language at more than one of the chief meeting-places of diverse tribes and races on the Pacific coast. ”

“ On the North American continent there were spoken probably 1,000, and possibly even more different languages and dialects. Of South America we know less, but everything points to an equal linguistic variety on that continent. The tremendous total is astounding because the aboriginal population in both continents certainly numbered fewer millions than are to-day found in many single European countries in which only one language prevails. The twenty-five or fifty millions of American Indians possessed as many different languages as the billion or more inhabitants of the old world. ”

“ Since we have drawn the distinction between adapted and indigenous folk-song, the question naturally arises whether there exists in America a truly indigenous folk-song at all. It has been agreed that America, having been colonized by Europeans, possesses no native culture whatever, except such as the Indians may have had. The Indian, indeed, has the best claim to the name American, being indigenous, or at least so early a colonizer as to have constituted virtually a native race. ”

“ Since which time the fierce fanaticism that overwhelmed the New World empire, has pressed like an incubus upon the dominant race, and held it fast while all the world around were making the most rapid strides forward.
No indigenous civilization exists in America to-day, yet the effects of a former culture are not altogether absent. The descendant of the Aztec, Maya, and Quiché, is still of superior mind and haughtier spirit than his roving brother who boasts of none but a savage ancestry. ”

“ The most natural solution would be to suppose that they originated in Africa, and were carried to South America by the negro slaves. They are certainly found among the Red Negroes; but, unfortunately for the African theory, it is equally certain that they are told by savage Indians of the Amazons Valley, away up on the Tapajos, Red Negro, and Tapura. These Indians hardly ever see a negro, and their languages are very distinct from the broken Portuguese spoken by the slaves. ”

“ During the afternoon, whilst resting in the shade, I listened to the loud, discordant, and grating sounds pronounced by the Indians around me. The language spoken was Maya, which has been ascertained to be the parent stock of most of the languages and dialects spoken in Guatemala, Yucatan and the bordering territories. I asked my host to give me a specimen of their dialect. ”

“ It is only necessary, however, to turn to the accounts of the earlier explorers of this region, Lewis and Clarke, for example, to refute the idea, so far at least as the Columbia Valley is concerned, although a study of the many diverse languages spread over the United States would seem sufficiently to prove that the tribes speaking them could not have originated at a common center, unless, indeed, at a period anterior to the formation of organized language.
The Indians inhabiting the Columbia Valley were divided into many tribes, belonging to several distinct linguistic families. ”

“ About half the births among the Indians and one-third among the whites are illegitimate.
No part of Central America contains a greater diversity of tribes, and in 1883 Otto Stoll estimated the number of spoken languages as eighteen, although east of the meridian of Lake Amatitlán the native speech has almost entirely disappeared and been replaced by Spanish. The Indians belong chiefly to the Maya stock, which predominates throughout Peten, or to the allied Quiché race which is well represented in the Altos and central districts. ”

“ This tendency to the establishment of intertribal jargons was greatly accelerated on the advent of the white man, for thereby many tribes were pushed from their ancestral homes and tribes were mixed with tribes. As a result, new relations and new industries, especially of trade, were established, and the new associations of tribe with tribe and of the Indians with Europeans led very often to the development of quite elaborate jargon languages. All of these have a tendency to complicate the study of the Indian tongues by comparative methods. ”

“ It is expedient with respect to the condition of the North American Indians, to take into consideration some of the circumstances relating to their languages, customs, and superstitions; particularly such of them as may appear to have remote analogies with the observances of other races, or with the more advanced state of civilisation that existed in the fifteenth century, among the tribes who had conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan. ”

“ The ideas to be expressed in their limited sphere of life and thought are few; consequently the stock of words is extremely small; besides, all Indians have the same way of thinking, and the same objects to talk about; these circumstances also contribute to the case with which they learn each other’s language. Hordes of the same tribe living on the same branch rivers, speak mutually unintelligible languages; this happens with the Miránhas on the Japurá, and with the Collínas on the Jurúa ”

“ The language of the Múras is entirely different from that of the tribes mentioned; but language is not a sure guide in the filiation of Brazilian tribes; seven or eight different languages being sometimes spoken on the same river, within a distance of 200 or 300 miles. There are certain peculiarities in Indian habits which lead to a quick corruption of language and segregation of dialects. When Indians, men or women, are conversing amongst themselves, they seem to take pleasure in inventing new modes of pronunciation, or in distorting words. ”

“ But students know that five different languages are spoken among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico today. They are: Tiwa, Tewa, Towa, Keres, and Zuñian. To be on the safe side, one should not touch too heavily upon languages spoken by Indians, especially in a writing of this kind. But languages and dialects do play an important part in our story. When those early people drifted from Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde toward the Rio Grande, they spoke a language. ”