Tag: Sapir-Whorf

Abenakis Language Attrition and Revitalization

Shayne Crawford

Overall, 52 percent of all the world’s languages are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people each (Coulmas 2005: 150 as cited in Van Herk, 2012). One of those languages happens to be Abenaki. Abenaki used to have several regional dialects. It is a branch of the Eastern Algonquin language group along with Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Malecite and Micmac who all speak distinct dialects of Eastern Algonquin (Wiseman, 2001, p.79). The Abenakis covered a vast amount of territory back in the day.

Wôbanakik covered a significant portion of what would become America during the years of the Moose (approximately 10 000 – 6500 Winters Ago) (Wiseman, 2001, p.26). Wôbanakik’s territory was significantly reduced by 1500 AD due to many circumstances relating to colonial invasion (Wiseman, 2001, p.70)

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Do different languages shape people’s different perceptions of the world ?

Xin

Imagine that there are a group of people who have various, distinct linguistic repertoires. Then an apple is showed in front of them with a question “What’s this?”. There is no doubt that everyone who has eaten or seen apples before will agree that it’s an apple, right? But what if they are represented with a picture of colour or a record of sound? Will they reach an agreement as well? Probably not. For example, Himba people use the word “zoozu” to refer to a wide variety of colors in English such as dark blue, dark green, dark brown, dark purple, dark red or black (Oaster, 2017). And for Candoshi, the indigenous people from Upper Amazon, there might be no terms for colors in their language (Surralles, 2016). It’s interesting to notice that representation of color is part of the objective reality, but people’s perceptions towards it may vary largely.

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