Talk:Massachusett language

Untitled
Article listed on Votes for deletion May 7, nomination was withdrawn following page expansion. Discussion:

Substub. As of this writing, entire content is:
 * An Algonquian language.

Delete unless expanded soon. Also, this may be my ignorance showing, but if not deleted, shouldn't it be moved from "Massachusett language" [sic] to "Massachusetts language"? Dpbsmith 16:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
 * I have expanded the page a tad. "Massachusett" is correct.  Later tonight I will see if Marianne Mithun's book has some more data I can add to the page.  Smerdis of Tlön 16:52, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

It looks fine to me now. Thanks. Since I put the VfD notice in, and since there are currently no votes for deletion other than mine, I'm removing the VfD notice from the page. No further voting needed here unless anyone feels strongly that it still needs to be deleted. Not sure of the etiquette--can I just remove this discussion from the VfD page, too? Dpbsmith 17:04, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

End discussion

To do to improve
CJLippert 21:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) examples of words to other Algonquian languages
 * 2) toponyms and their meanings
 * 3) basic grammar
 * 4) when it went extinct
 * 5) dialectology of the r/l/y/n dialects
 * 6) map showing range
 * 7) state of ethnoarcheological efforts in reviving the language

( Continued from below, under Our Father thing.)

But I have this to say. So many of these Wikipedia language articles are very small. Compare this article to Russian language article. This language is especially interesting ; could someone put forward an interlinear translation of the Our Father ?

I also want to call out for Jessie Little Doe Baird or someone like her to put her 10,000 word dictionary online for free on Scribd and then build up this Wikipedia page. As apparently few people care, she just might experience less troubles from the Moderators. It seems that she's either keeping it as a "trade secret" or just doesn't know how the internet works. I never saw a language hurt from having extensive word lists online. All her research is useless to the scholarly community without publication. Someone just has to do it for themselves. I met another "university-trained" "indian linguist" (I'm an Indian linguist, too, by the way) at college and she also acted like she was Prometheus bring fire from Olympus, and neither worked much with anyone else, nor gained a decent grasp of the fundamentals of linguistics as it bore upon her work. But anyone who's studied Indian cultures and kivas and Indian mystery cults and history can understand why these two linguists might be acting this way. This, by the way, is a second example of how reality and cultures go contrary to our likings and expectations.

Also, there's so many free online items from the corpus. Couldn't there be links to them ? There's this other related language that called Nagarachusett or something; this one guy says it and Massachusett are dialects of the same language, but the Algonquin language families disagree with this.

Give there's such a storied history, I think it would be of special interest to missionaries, scholars, others, how Little Doe did NOT use John Eliot's cool old-skoool orthography, but instead adopted an orthography based on plain-jane modern amerind linguistics (which I think was half a good move). But I wonder if, unless it's in her dissertation, Little Doe went into much detail about this, so it would be original research, forbidden here. As much as I like old-skool quasi-English-based orthographies, I have to say that John Eliot did a truely horribly job (in modern eyes). I can't believe he was trained in Latin or Greek; maybe he wanted a transition orthography to English. I think he needed to borrow more words and leave out vowels. Anyway ...

I think these are important points to make. The East Coast is so politicized and PC, like Disney's Pochahantas. I never encountered a language talk page where someone contested the inclusion of an Our Father from a limited corpus made mostly by a Puritan false prophet from the 1600s.

Finally, be happy there's any text on the page ! Micmac has its own pseudo-hieroglyphic mneumonic system, but because writing systems are so taboo in modern academics, these are not features on its wikipedia article. ( Micmac hieroglyphic) Oh, wait, it is on there ! But it is also not translated interlinearly, at least not in English ( it's in German ) ... That it's in German is the third example. Maybe the fourth.

Dwarfkingdom (talk) 03:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Explaining my edit
The claims in the previous version were not referenced; I've referenced the current claims with a scholarly article written by one of the top Algonquianists (but I do concede that it's out of date). I've tried a compromise wording in the infobox, but any claims about the language currently being spoken (as opposed to there being revival efforts underway) should be referenced. Dr. Frank Waabu O'Brien, for one, says that "What is believed to be certain is that no one living today has heard a speaker express themselves as a fluent speaker in those languages and dialects that once filled the Algonquian villages, wigwams, woods, fields and mountains in those parts of America called “New-England”. No extinct American Indian language has ever been brought back to life". --Miskwito 21:55, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

this use of "The Lord's Prayer" as a translation example is offensive
I think it's a bit of a stretch to assume that every reader knows what "The Lord's Prayer" is, let alone not require the full text in English for comparison. Not everyone is Western, or Christian.

Also these native Americans had their own belief system, we need to have a more appropriate translation example. As prose goes, this prayer is also a poor choice since it's not even an example of modern English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.218.218.95 (talk) 04:55, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) You may find it offensive, but it's actually an often-followed practice when setting out samples of literary languages (done by secular linguists or philologists without overt reliigous motives). Suppose you want to set side-by-side samples of attested texts of Gothic, Old Church Slavonic, and Latin for comparative purposes. What's a text which is likely to have been translated into all three languages in ancient times, and where all the translations have survived into modern times?  The New Testament is about the only such text available, and the Lord's Prayer is one of its most well-known passages.


 * 2) Very little of the Massachusett language has survived, other than the Bible translation... AnonMoos (talk) 16:08, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm part Huron.

Most people aren't trained linguists and don't know what it's like, and can't see the big picture. You shouldn't find it offensive unless you want people ignorant of the language. How can I explain this ? When I deal with "Buddhists" (culture-based literary etc.) languages, the easiest texts to deal with are translations of buddhist writings because we know what they mean. Likewise, Mohammedeans (Muslim)(this is how my culture spells it, please don't change) languages feature translations from the Koran. Most of the Corpus for Massachusett is Protestant, so the typical thing to do for "Protestants" languages, or Un-orthodox, or Holy Catholic languages is to give an Our Father. After you study a million languages, you'll see the value in that, too.

If most people in the West don't know what the Lord's Prayer is, they certain don't know how the Koran or Rig Veda begin. Or the Aeneid, for that matter. But, sigh, I'm afraid that outide of English, there are few ancient or modern language where the theme song to "Friends" makes much of an appearance, let alone the kind of word-for-word translations heaped upon religious texts. You know, one of the key moments in Chinese history was when one monk traveled all the way to India to get better translations of Buddist texts. They made an opera out of this, maybe a super-famous novel, and its re-runs on television are widely viewed c. 1900-present.

Do I get offended because the inscriptions in Southeast Asia are Hindu ? Tocharian A is Hindu, so I don't grit my teeth and bear with it ? No. And this is a lesson for non-linguists in what ancient languages and their limited corpa are like.

I'm a traditional Catholic, and I don't think they're real Bibles or Our Fathers, but I'm not offended that they're included. There are no traditional Catholic texts in Urartian, which is too bad. And the corpus seems all Puritan, so I don't think you'll find any "authentic" Massachusett prayers. HOWEVER, someone could include what most would consider an real indigenous Massachusett prayer, hopefully with interlinear. But please, site where you got it from and how old it is, so we know how to understand it.

It is my wish that everyone could have a correct understanding of all languages and religions, and for certain people, this is accomplished through the presentation of texts (scholars), while others heed them.

The rest of my contribution I'm putting with the suggestions above.

Dwarfkingdom (talk) 03:16, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

ȣ, 8, ꝏ
Should ꝏ or 8 or even ȣ be used? The letter ꝏ is a oo ligature letter used in Eliot 1666, the 8 is a digit character and is most often used as a letter (in this case by the WLRP), the ȣ is a letter character encoded for the purpose of representing what letter the digit 8 is used for. Unless the WLRP means to use 8 for ꝏ, it would be good to clarify that. ---Moyogo/ (talk) 22:45, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Diaspora
I'm moving a paragraph from the "Geographic distribution" section here to see if anyone can do anything with it. These descendant communities make no mention of the language. Yuchitown (talk) 15:25, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Yuchitown

Wampanoag descendants in diaspora may include descendants of Native Americans of New England who were captured during the Pequot War and King Philip's War, sold into slavery, and sent to St. David's Island, Bermuda. A small number of Métis on Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia may descend from intermarriages between the local Mi'kmaq, Acadian French settlers, and Wampanoag fishermen, crewmen, and whalers who came to seek work in the 19th century.

Yuchitown (talk) 15:25, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Vowel [ʲᵊ]
What is [ʲᵊ] supposed to be? Is it a monophthong, diphthong, or even a vowel in its own right? JordiLopezboy (talk) 21:27, 21 April 2024 (UTC)