The sound of the Sitimaxa language of Louisiana’s Chitimacha tribe was thought to have vanished forever when the last native speaker died in 1940.
Now the language is returning to life thanks to the discovery of long-lost ethnographical recordings and field notes, a grant for language-learning software from Rosetta Stone Inc., and the Chitimachas’ own determination to preserve and practice the touchstone of their cultural identity.
“Language is really the heart of who you are. It’s not just about learning the words; it’s about learning your past. It’s that connection,” said Kimberly S. Walden, M.Ed., cultural director of the 1,070 member Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana.
The tribe has partnered with Rosetta Stone to develop a Sitimaxa edition of the company’s well-advertised language learning software. Based in Arlington, Va., Rosetta Stone has created software for other indigenous peoples including the Kahnawake community of Mohawks in Quebec and Inupiaq of northwest Alaska.
Valued at $300,000, the three-year development effort is largely underwritten by a grant from Rosetta Stone’s Endangered Language Program. The highly-interactive, immersion-based software will enhance ongoing education programs for children and adults at the Chitimacha reservation in Charenton, La. Tribal members as far away as Guam and Germany will be able to learn Sitimaxa using CDs or through online access.
The tribe will also own distribution and sales rights to Sitimaxa learning programs, a potential source of new revenues. The Inupiaq, for example, market their Rosetta Stone software online to tribal members, scholars and amateur linguists for $190 per package.
“Our hope is that Sitimaxa Rosetta Stone software will be a tool that will make a difference in the vitality of the language of the Chitimacha Tribe,” said Marion Bittinger, manager of the Endangered Language Program. “We look forward to working with the tribe to help realize their vision for a living and growing language.”
The restoration of Sitimaxa (pronounced “see-tee-masha”) as a living language has all the plot twists of a good detective story.
The language all but disappeared when the last fluent speaker died in 1934 and the last semi-fluent speaker died in 1940. One generation, then another, grew up knowing no more than a few words of the rich language of their ancestors.
The Sitimaxa's verb 'to go' in
Dr. Morris Swadesh's field notes from the 1930s.
Then in 1986, the Library of Congress mailed the tribe copies of wax cylinder recordings made in the 1930s by Swedish linguist Morris Swadesh. Tribal members listened to over 200 hours of their language – sounds no one had heard in decades, a cultural treasure buried in archives for half a lifetime. To help decode what was recorded, the tribe relied on field notes made by Swadesh and his wife. Slowly, the Chitimacha began weaving these fragments into a fluently spoken language
“The recordings were very hard to understand, especially if you’d never heard the language spoken before,” Walden said. “You have to realize that, as long as I was growing up, all we had in Sitimaxa was a few words on a museum brochure that no one could pronounce.”
In 1995, the Chitimacha tribe established a cultural department. Employees asked archeological contractors in Louisiana if they knew of anyone familiar with Sitimaxa – a long-shot request that, improbably, paid off. Contractors suggested the tribe contact Dr. Julian Granberry, a linguist and anthropologist living in Florida who had worked with Swadesh as a high school sophomore.
Granberry, now 80, had studied their language for decades, but had never visited the reservation. So when the tribe invited Granberry to share his findings, emotions ran high. “When Dr. Granberry spoke Sitimaxa to a group of Chitimacha elders assembled at a meeting, some of the elders began to cry,” said Walden. “Words started coming back. They remembered.”
