English words borrowed from Wôpanâak:
Pumpkin/Pôhpukun (ponh-pu-kun) = ‘grows forth round’
Moccasin/Mahkus (mah-kus) = ‘Covers the whole foot’
Skunk/Sukôk (su-konk) = ‘Ejects body fluid’
Moose/M8s (moos) = ‘moose’
Powwow/Pawâw (pa-waaw) = ‘s/he is healing/heals (someone)’
#wopanaak #wopanaaklanguagereclamationproject #wampanoag #nativelanguage #WLRP
“…at the time the Mayflower landed in Plymouth Bay, Galileo was banned by the Inquisition from saying that the Earth revolved around the Sun…Like all Algonquian languages, Wampanoag nouns are divided into two categories, animate and inanimate... In Wampanoag, the Sun is inanimate, while the Earth, which moves independently of it, is animate.”
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/language-out-time
Five hundred years ago, the Wampanoag people received a prophecy. It said that the Wampanoag would not be able to keep their language, but that a group of Wampanoag people would leave southern New England taking with them a pipe containing the spirit of language. One day, according to the prophecy, a woman in the East would welcome the language home.
Josh