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Wôpanâak, the language of the Wampanoag people of Massachusetts, stopped being spoken in the nineteenth century. From the 1990s Jessie Little Doe Baird, a Mashpee Wampanoag, rebuilt it from old written records, and her daughter grew up as its first native speaker in more than a century.

Mashpee, Massachusetts, 1993

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The story behind the card

Baird says it began with dreams in which people spoke to her in words she could not understand; later she recognised them as Wôpanâak. In 1993 she co-founded the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, and at MIT, working with the linguist Kenneth Hale, she earned a master's degree in linguistics in 2000. Her sources were unusually rich: a 1663 translation of the Bible, the first Bible printed in the Americas, and many letters, deeds and wills that Wampanoag people wrote in their own language in the 1600s and 1700s. Related Algonquian languages helped with grammar and pronunciation. The dictionary she began has more than 10,000 entries, and in 2010 she received a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called genius grant. A small immersion school now teaches young children in the language in Mashpee.

Türkçe oku
Massachusetts'teki Wampanoag halkının dili Wôpanâak, 19. yüzyılda konuşulmaz oldu. Mashpee Wampanoag halkından Jessie Little Doe Baird 1990'lardan itibaren dili eski yazılı kayıtlardan yeniden kurdu; kızı da yüz yılı aşkın bir aradan sonra bu dili ana dili olarak konuşan ilk kişi oldu.
Mashpee, Massachusetts, 1993

Baird, her şeyin rüyalarla başladığını anlatır: Rüyalarında insanlar ona anlamadığı sözcüklerle sesleniyordu; bunların Wôpanâak olduğunu sonradan anladı. 1993'te Wôpanâak Dilini Geri Kazanma Projesi'ni kuranlar arasında yer aldı; MIT'de dilbilimci Kenneth Hale'le çalışarak 2000'de dilbilim yüksek lisansını tamamladı. Elindeki malzeme beklenenden zengindi: Amerika kıtasında basılan ilk Kitab-ı Mukaddes olan 1663 tarihli çeviri, bir de Wampanoagların 1600'ler ve 1700'lerde kendi dillerinde yazdığı çok sayıda mektup, tapu ve vasiyetname. Dilbilgisi ve söyleyiş için akraba Algonkin dillerinden yararlandı. Başlattığı sözlükte bugün 10.000'den fazla madde var. 2010'da, “dâhi bursu” diye de anılan MacArthur Bursu'nu aldı. Mashpee'de bugün küçük çocuklara bu dilde eğitim veren bir okul da var.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Jessie Little Doe Baird
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