Nowadays, I don't think anybody thinks like that," he said.Īnderton, too, has heard similar concerns about creating an alphabet and passing the language on. ![]() "Way back in the warrior days, that had a lot of pull with the tribe. When an Indian language becomes open to anyone who studies it, the tribe's secrets are subject to being discovered too, he said. "The only time I miss it is when I'm not around Comanche-speaking people for a long time," Red Elk said.īut Red Elk said he has mixed feelings about teaching the language because of what elders told him 20 years ago. But he speaks Comanche whenever he is around other elders. He now does not speak the language at home because his wife is a member of another tribe and speaks a different language. There, Indians were punished if they spoke their native tongue. He spoke the language constantly until he was about 5, when he went to school. " At 71, Comanche elder Elk supports the tribe's efforts to protect its culture. Comanche "is easier than reading and writing English. " "You can write any human language," Anderton explains. ![]() Anderton responds by pointing to a button she wears. " Some Comanches have complained the language is an oral language and not one that can be written. Some class members stumble over "Yu?anuetabe?ikanakwu," the longest one Anderton has run across. "Namewatsuwitu," the word for the number 8, is a hard one for some. " The class continues to repeat her words, struggling with a few of them. The new system "is really designed to be as simple as possibly can be," Anderton tells her class. In the past, Comanches taking classes have taken notes according to how they heard the words, but then had trouble reading their own notes or explaining what they meant to other people. "One man in our class (at Cameron University) could sing all the hymns, but he had no idea what they said," Espinal said.Īnderton said the tribe's official alphabet will help preserve the language because there will no longer be conflicting spellings for each word, making the language easier to teach. She worries that if the Comanche language dies out, so will the meanings behind the prayers and the hymns the Indians sing so often during their rituals. Many of the Comanche vowels - a, e, i, o, and two u sounds - are similar to her native German dialect.Įspinal has taken several Comanche language classes. Lawton resident Renate Espinal finds it easy to pronounce the Comanche language's words because she is German. Now she is traveling from community to community, including Walters, Lawton, Apache and Cache to reach others with the language. The Norman linguist helped the Comanches develop the alphabet and a working dictionary through research she did while teaching a Comanche language class at the University of Oklahoma, Anderton said. The idea for the workshops grew when committee members realized they had a new alphabet, about 9,000 tribal members, and only about 20 people who knew how to use it, Anderton said. Most of those who now speak the language are over 70.Īt 46, Mejia said she is taking the class because she wants to learn the language her mother, a full-blooded Comanche Indian, speaks. The students have come voluntarily to try to preserve the language of their ancestors before it dies with them. Red Elk smiles in recognition of the Comanche word for fish. One student attempts the word "peekwi," reading it from a card. " Tribal elder Roderick Red Elk, 71, is on hand to make sure class members say the words right. She also explains how the "glottal stop" letter - that looks like a question mark without the dot on the bottom - sounds like the vocal break between "uh" and "oh" in "uh-oh. They're eager to learn the words of the ancestors.Īnderton, a linguist, shows them how to put their lips together to make the strange language's "b" sound that almost sounds like a "v." She tells them about how the Comanche language is one of the few in the world that uses whispering vowels, or vowels spoken in a whisper. The students, ranging in age from 12 to those in their 70s, follow in unison. ![]() "Isa hini? " she'll ask, pointing to words on the chalkboard or on flash cards. Alice Anderton rapidly runs down a list of words, asking her classroom of about 25 students - mostly Comanche Indians - to repeat them after her.
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