By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho Jayek, (Hello everyone),
When you receive this, we will be wrapping up our six-week Tuesday and Thursday Beginner Potawatomi Class. Our first class went well. We had around 18 people in person and 55 online. Most classes we teach include both an onsite element as well as an online version. We also record the classes, if you have to miss a class or if you would like to check the class out now. Send an email to language@potawatomi.org and we can send you a link to our YouTube channel playlist.
We are also close to finishing up our Potawatomi 1 and Potawatomi 2 high school course. If you have a student in Oklahoma who is interested in taking Potawatomi to count towards world language credit for graduation, please let us know. It will need to be something we set up probably six months prior since some districts may need to run it by their board of education or administration at their high school. We would be happy to offer it in different districts. We have offered it so far in Wanette, Maud, Seminole and Shawnee, as well as Shawnee Middle School. We developed a middle school program specifically for Shawnee to fill a void because they did not have a Spanish teacher available. We are happy to share this course as well with middle schools that might be interested in offering it as an eight-week elective. Let us know how we can help your student out.
Our online dictionary continues to be improved upon on a daily basis. We are adding example sentences with audio, historical audio, images, videos and cultural information. Recently, our IT department created a verb conjugation device for VTA (verb transitive animate) verbs which really is a game changer for a lot of people. VTA verbs are some of the harder verbs to conjugate, and there are around 36 combinations. You can now choose builder in the dictionary then scroll down to the verb you want to conjugate and then choose who is acting on whom and it will conjugate it in the independent form. Right now, it only works with VTA verbs that end in ma. We are working to add other combinations, such as ones that end in na, wa and zewa. Also, we are considering doing this for other types of verbs in the future and the conjunct form for VTA. It’s a really cool tool and migwetch to Jonathan and our whole IT team for helping us get it going. Also, if you haven’t tried searching tags try that out. There are tags like animals, objects, people, school words. Some of the tags have subcategories like mammals, reptiles and birds.
We also are constantly working on updating and adding to our online content for folks who want to learn the language at their own pace at learning.potawatomi.org. We currently have an introduction course, a course designed for folks who want to study grammar, and also a children’s course for middle school students. We are also working on a conversational based course.
If you enjoy podcasts or need something to listen to while commuting to work or doing things around the house, we have a podcast on SoundCloud. It’s called Bodéwadmimwen Kiktowen. These are a series of skits that build off the previous skit to help folks really focus on listening and comprehension. Currently we are putting a new one up each Tuesday. We have shared nine skits so far. We are also finishing up work on Why the rabbit has a short tail in Potawatomi.
Migwetch (Thank you)
