Native tribes in Illinois, and parts of Indiana, Missouri and Ohio spoke the Miami-Illinois language (Algonquian) until the mid 20th century. Descendents of these speakers belong to the Miami and Peoria tribes, which ended up in Oklahoma. However, the language isn’t considered extinct, rather, “sleeping”, since Daryl Baldwin taught himself the language from print materials and set out to revive the language by founding the Miami Project at Miami University in 2001. With help of linguist David Costa as well as George Ironstrack (Miami) and Andrew J. Strack, the Miami Project is researching missionary records and other archaic material to synthesize descriptions of Miami-Illinois grammar (including a dictionary), publish various pedagogical resources, and equip the language for the digital age. This is one of the best resources for a Native language that is no longer spoken!

Tags: Andrew J. Strack, Daryl Baldwin, David Costa, George Irontrack, Illinois, Miami, Miami Project, Miami University, Miami-Illinois, Miami-Illinois language, Peoria, revitalization

This entry was posted by mathias on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 12:09 PM and is filed under Miami-Illinois, Organization Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.