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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
More on revival of Virginia Algonquian
Seedmagazine.com has a story on the UNC-Charlotte English professor who was asked to recreate the long-dead Virginia Algonquian language for Terrence Malick's The New World (see my review here).
One amusing example of Rudes' work involved a bit performer in The New World whose task was to walk up a hill, gaze down on the new colonists building Jamestown Fort and promptly be shot dead by the oh-so-civilized white men. The actor lobbied to say something cute before he was killed off, eventually settling on the New Yorker-worthy quip, "There goes the neighborhood."
To translate this short sentence, Rudes first rephrased it as "They will destroy the neighborhood." He already knew the word for "they;" the suffix to change it to the future tense; and the verb meaning "destroy." To create the word "neighborhood," he joined two words from the closely-related language of the Massachusett tribe, one for "neighbor" and one for "place." He then added the ending for "it is." He next changed the letters from the original Massachusett words to the corresponding Virginia Algonquian letters. Finally, he came up with the word "wikahkamikaaw" for "it is the neighborhood." Rudes later discovered that there was once a Virginia Algonquian town of the same name, reassuring him that his made-up word existed in the original language.
I have yet to read anything on reaction from the linguistic and Native American communities about the use of the language in the film, but I'll be sure to post anything here. Fascinating stuff!
Posted by Will at January 25, 2006 04:48 PM in Anthropology | In the News