The Hello and welcome to Iroquois History and Legends.

This is Andrew. Today, I wanted to change gears a little bit. Although it will be discussing history, it's more the history of

language. And that's something that's near and dear to my heart. Linguistics is my focused field of

study, and I love learning about words and where they come from and how they influence and shape

culture and thinking. Although I do not speak or know any of the

Iroquoian languages, it's nonetheless learning about how they work and how they developed and

how they continue to evolve today and the issues that involve revitalization and how many of them are endangered of being lost forever is an issue that is still pressing for Hodi Nishone people today.

So I wanted to give a broad historical outline and then where the languages stand today.

So let's get in and start with the basicness of what a language is.

All of you I know speak at least one language.

Many of you probably multiple languages or at least know something about different languages.

And we take a lot of it for granted, really, how easy and effortless it is to talk to somebody.

But when you're thrown into another culture, it could be very intimidating and you feel like

you're a moron, like you're stupid because you can't say

or request simple things. But languages are unique. Although animals and different creatures and

even plants are able to communicate in different ways, there's nothing like the human language,

how we can communicate abstract thoughts and ideas

and wishes and desires, dreams, visions, explain quantum mechanics or talk about love or deep passion

or sadness.

These are things that are completely unique to the human culture in the way and the depth

in which we can express things and we develop arts and drama and music and pictures and sculptures to express our different ideas and emotions.

It really is remarkable.

...