Re: Help with US SW langs + new lang

At 8:47 AM -0800 03/14/02, Frank George Valoczy wrote:
>Anyway: the Modzhi language needs some influence from the Western North
>American languages, as the Modzhi government realised that if they allow
>the various subject nations to keep their language and culture, said
>nations will more voluntarily fight for the Empire and pay taxes. So, in
>the Empire, most of the First Nations languages are still alive and in
>use, and the larger ones have regionally official status (the Empire is
>divided into dominions/dukedoms).
>
>Now for the point of the question: In the area I described, what are the
>major Native languages that would most likely have influence on the Modzhi
>language? More specifically in the US, for I know the Canadian region well
>enough; influence will come from Tlingit, Halkomelem (especially, since
>the capital region, Vancouver *here*, is Halkomelem territory), Shuswap
>and Blackfoot. So yeah, I'm thinking more the southern area, like Northern
>Cal, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming-ish area.
I wonder why you think that immigrant Modzhi speakers would be more
likely to accept influence from native languages of the region
*there* than either Spanish or English speakers have *here*. Spanish
and English have adopted occasional loanwords, but there has been no
other perceptible influence from the native languages of the region.
Now a related question would be how the native population would alter
the immigrant Modzhi language -- the analogue *there* to "Indian
English" *here*. But I suspect that that's not what you're after.

That said, I suspect that the most influential languages would be the
Numic languages Shoshoni and Ute. I say this not because I'm partial
to them (which I am :-), but because they are spread across the
widest area. Shoshoni is spread across the whole of the Great Basin
(except for the corner occupied by Washo speakers), and the Utes
occupy the Rocky Mountain valleys of Utah and Colorado. Northern
California is a patchwork of small ethnic groups which don't seem to
have banded together in any significant way. There were some
charismatic Shoshoni and Ute leaders who managed to muster widely
separated bands for military purposes, though.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                  Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

Man deth swa he byth thonne he mot swa he wile.
'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants.'

- Old English Proverb

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