Helping the Seneca Language Zoom Back to Good Health and Onward to Worldwide Respectability
Dear Fellow Earthlings,
I have created a forum for speakers of Seneca. I am using the "ZOOM" system to expedite this effort. During my get-togethers with speakers of that precious artifact of the Onondowa'ga people, I will guide them by teaching them the gaE'nO' (the "Seneca Jingles"). Much like Cornplanter after he came out of the "years of contemplation", I have thought deeply enough and long enough about Seneca. This period of deeper concentration has made me aware that it is my mission to help revitalize the Seneca language.
It is, of course, impossible to go back to the days before Europeans reached the continent of North America. The Seneca people have been forever affected and impacted by the floods of people pouring into their lands beginning in the 1600s. In the short time span of 400 years, the Seneca nation has gone from proud warriors and well run longhouse-based societies to a people quickly being assimilated into the mainstream American culture. Even as American culture itself is being forced to change due to the influx of masses of new people coming into the United States, the Seneca people are becoming part of the so-called "melting pot" that is currently decried by many 21st Century people.
Where is the logic in allowing people from fully established countries on the other sides of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to establish pockets of ethnicity in the Americas while forcing the descendants of people who were here long before the influx of people from those places to give up their pre-"discovery" ways of life?
Now with computerization and AI it is possible to revitalize beleaguered languages and cultures. Why not program our automobiles and cell phones to provide instantaneous translations of incoming messages into Seneca or Onondaga or Navajo or Irish Gaelic or any other language? It is doable,
The first meeting is scheduled to take place on May 19, 2020 at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time (in the United States). The longterm goal of the series of meetings (which will be held every Tuesday from May 19, 2020 through November 24, 2020) is "Preserving the Pronunciation of the Seneca Language". The initial goal of these first 28 90-minute ZOOM sessions is to begin developing a "community phonome" for speakers of Seneca. AS that community phonome develops, so too will the possibility of an increased number of Seneca language broadcasts, telecasts, social media exchanges, and actual talk in Seneca.
Since my own knowledge of Seneca is -- at this point -- at most ultra-rudimentary, I will depend on whoever speaks the tongue better than I do (supplemented by whatever scant literature is available to us as we set out to bring Seneca completely back to true sociolinguistic functionality) to push its development along.
Gotta make our moves NOW! If not, great beauty, chunks of heritage, keys to deeper understanding of ourselves will be lost forever. We can't do it by strolling or even sprinting towards our goal. Rather, we must ZOOM toward it!
Steve Walker
Earthsaver and Jingles Creator
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.