By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho Jayek, (Hello everyone),
It’s been a busy summer here in the Language Department. As we are getting ready for fall, it’s time for online high school courses and also time to start a new fall class. We will have a class starting Aug. 20 that meets every Tuesday and Thursday for eight weeks. The class will be from 6-7:30 p.m. Central Time at the Cultural Heritage Center. We will also have a Zoom option available.
The Language Department just got back from the Potawatomi Language Conference and Gathering. We had a chance to attend classes taught by folks from each of the different language programs. We also had a chance to network and share ideas with the different language departments. Overall, it was a good time of fellowship and great for brainstorming ideas. I am a big believer in not remaking the wheel. If something being done in another community could be used here or something we do in Shawnee could be used elsewhere, that’s a good thing.
I presented at the conference and talked about VTA verbs and constructing sentences with them. VTA verbs can be challenging for language learners as they have about 34 different conjugations in their base form or independent form. Often, we find ourselves drilling them and using charts to try to learn them. In this class, I demonstrated how in context sometimes they are easier to understand than just a pattern for example, “he sees us.”
There were a number of Citizen Potawatomi folks presenting which was something we can all be proud of. Lindsey Marean, Robert Lewis, Robert Collins and Wkenodan Getgadekwen all presented. I was particularly impressed by Wkenodan Getgadekwen, who is a young man about 17 years old who has managed to master the language at a very high level. He gave his whole presentation in the language using images and talking about the images and what is seen. Each of the others did an excellent job as well.
One question that that came up at the conference was what we, as a collective, felt the state of the language was. Though there is the reality that we have less than five first language speakers, just looking at the other passionate folks up on the stage you can tell we are heading in a good direction. As you can tell, we are well represented as Citizen Potawatomi people. I do believe that we have so many more resources than I had when I started learning the language over 25 years ago. If you haven’t had a chance, check out our online course at cpn.news/learning.
We have been working with IT on developing a verb conjugation tool for some of the harder VTA verbs. This tool can be accessed at potawatomidictionary.com, then on the left side, click on builder. It will allow you to choose past, present or future and then pick who is acting on whom. It’s a pretty handy tool. Right now, it’s only for the independent or base pattern and only for verbs that end in ma. We hope to create one for Wa, Na, Mewa and Sa ending verbs in the future as they operate a little differently.
Migwetch (Thank you)