Thursday, September 10, 2009

Language Geek's "Mahican" Page

I'm thoroughly impressed with Christopher Harvey, or "Language Geek," as he is known on the web. I haven't met Mr. Harvey, but according to his website, he speaks English, French, and Welsh, and has studied Spanish, Irish Gaelic, Ancient Greek, Cree, Mohawk, Ojibway, Dinka, Latin, Hungarian, Korean, Innu, and Esperanto.

Language Geek's Mahican page got a healthy dose of "street cred" a few days ago when it was recommended on the Mohican 7 Yahoo subscription group. In my view, his website also has whatever kind of credibility I can give it. Chris Harvey has obviously done an awful lot of work on Native languages.

Ojibwa and Cree are the two languages (or dialects) from the Algonkian language family that Chris Harvey has studied formally. That expertise not only transfered into a knowledge of the hybrid language Oji-Cree, but also at least a working knowledge of the other Algonkian languages.

Language Geek has a Menominee page - it looks impossible to learn if you ask me (in case you don't know, Menominee is also an Algonkian language). Unfortunately, however, he leaves us with nothing on the Delaware language.

Language Geek warns that the content of his Mahican page is tentative to "VERY tentative." That explains why he doesn't have it linked to his main site. ("Mahican" is just a different spelling [or should I say different pronounciation] of "Mohican.")

Wâg g’nawenòhmâ!
(That means "good-bye [to many people], I'll see you again!")

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