Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The letter "8"

Q: In the section:  How is the Abenaki tribe organized?
in the final sentence, it reads "The leader or chief of each Abenaki band is
called sagama or sag8mo in their language."
I’m not sure but "sag8mo" seems like a typo.
Thanks for the info.

A:   Strange as it may seem, no... the "8" was an old linguistic symbol, used by missionaries, to represent a nasal "aw" sound as in "dawn," which is how the middle vowel in that word is actually pronounced.

Since most Native American languages were traditionally unwritten, the spelling systems that have been used for them have sometimes been a little on the unintuitive side.

Hope that is interesting to you. Have a good day!

Further reading:
Abenaki language
Abenaki alphabet
Abenaki tribe   

1 comment:

  1. My grandfather was a very proud man who worked hard and would never except government assistance, the thing is he tried to teach me to embrace his heritage and see the beauty of music,nature and wisdom, but I didn't get grades for that,I had to learn about Lewis and Clark and Dr. Martin Luther king I was a child and I feel bad as an adult I don't know anything about how I came to be, I only knew the only time I was around other American Indians was when I was around family, my neighborhood was black people and white people so when I looked in the mirror I felt I resembled black people, I fought hard to claim the title of a black girl because my hair was different, I guess I feel like I'm a sell out and I just want to say I'm sorry, I can't tell my grandfather so I thought I could say it to someone else and that it's all here inside me I did really listen and I'm so glad it was keep safe inside me until I was wise enough to respect a part of my heritage.

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