Q: I'm going to be talking to a 2nd-grade class about the Wampanoag and Timucua Indians for a few minutes. I've been making presentation cards comparing the two indigenous tribes that, hopefully, are geared towards 7 and 8 year olds. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to show them how to count to 10 in both languages, but I can only find numbers to 1 to 5 for the Wampanoag on your site. Is that all that's known? Do you happen to have numbers 6 through 10 anywhere?
A: Yes, those numbers were taken from an 18th-century dictionary of Massachusett (Wampanoag). Here is the full set of ten numbers from that dictionary:
1) aquit
2) nees
3) nis
4) yoaw
5) abbona
6) nota
7) enotta
8) sonaske
9) assaquoquin
10) piocke
The source is Wood's Vocabulary of Massachusett.
Of course, this is a very old dictionary, and it lacks a pronunciation guide or standardized spelling even for the English words. The modern Wampanoag tribe is working on a language revival program, where they are taking words from old texts and from cultural memory and comparing them with words from related Algonquian languages to reconstruct their native language with a real alphabet, pronunciation guide, etc. to help their children learn to speak it again. This is a work in progress, but if you're interested, here's their webpage: http://wlrp.org/
Hope that helps, have a good day!
Native Languages of the Americas
Further reading:
Wampanoag language
Wampanoag Indians
American Indian numbers
My maternal grandmother Florence Bell (Snow) Anderson was, according to her and her mother and grandmother, descended from the Wampanoag Sachem Metacom - aka as King Philip,(naturally I have zero proof of that, only my late [born Oct 9, 1902] grandmothers word for it) - taught us kids to count to ten in "Indian" and her's my best interpretation. I am Rhode Island Jim - Jim Magee, born April 4, 1949
ReplyDelete1 - Nek
2 - Tok
3 - Cees
4 - Nees
5 - Noz
6 - Nuzzigan
7 - Aquamublit
8 - Aquamublen
9 - Tequalay
10 - Tollence
Interesting number set! It looks more like Passamaquoddy than Wampanoag/Massachuset to me. Did your mother have any family from further to the north (Canada or Maine?) Here are the Passamaquoddy numbers:
Delete1: Neqt
2: Tapu
3: Sis
4: New
5: Nan
6: Kamacin
7: Oluwikonok
8: Oqomolcin
9: Esqonatek
10: Qotinsk
The matches to your wordset get fuzzier as the numbers get higher, but that's typical when you're talking about number sets remembered from 100 years ago by a few different generations. The presence of the letter "L" (rare in other Algonquian languages) and the similarity between "oqomolcin" and "aquamublen" particularly stand out to me, as well as a number 2 beginning with "t."
Passamaquoddy/Maliseet speakers, what do you think? :-) Happy New Year, everyone!