Talk:Iroquoian languages

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Conestoga/Susquehannock/Andaste

I again undid the changes claiming Conestoga is a currently living language due to the continued lack of evidence from reliable sources:

1. The link to the Conestoga language webpage on Living Dictionaries/Living Tongues [1] has only one contributor, the same as the wiki editor claiming the language is still widely spoken, so is circular self-citing.
2. The website of the Conestoga Language and Culture Authority [2] referenced by that same wiki editor also appears to be the work of the same individual, furthering circularity and self-citing.
3. The Living Tongues Institute itself doesn't check validity of submissions, e.g. if there is an actual community of speakers or if there is just a conlang, so is not in a position to justify the speaker status of a language. Cf. their entry for Dlëshood’ian -- it's given the ISO 639-3 code for Aari, a language from Ethiopia whose entry in Wikipedia doesn't mention the term Dlëshood’ian as a variant. It is also given geographical coordinates in New Jersey, not Ethiopia, and managed by someone named Hdjdjxh Hdhdhruieh.
4. The same editor has modified the Susquehannock language page to give an estimated 3,000 to 20,000 speakers. The smaller number is almost as many as for Mohawk, and the larger is nearly 8,000 more than for Cherokee, and so puts Conestoga as the third largest Indigenous language spoken in the United States. With such massive numbers of speakers, the language would not be so overlooked as to be considered dormant any more than, say, Apache would. Those numbers alone suggest a hoax or severe misunderstanding of what the term "Conestoga" refers to.
5. The grammar and vocabulary mentioned by this editor in the Susquehannock page and the Living Dictionaries grammar page [3] are not of any Northern Iroquoian language, while the already-existing documentation of the Conestoga language shows it is clearly Northern (cf. the Susquehannock page's reference to Mithun (1981) analyzing previous documentation). What the editor gives appears to be a variant of Cherokee, the Southern Iroquoian language. The complete difference between the historically documented language and what the editor calls Conestoga here needs to be explained, as well as why his Conestoga is so much like Cherokee, the most divergent Iroquoian language, instead, to even begin to accept their "Conestoga" as accurate.

I don't know whether this is simply a hoax, which has happened before when a Mohawk speaker claimed to be a Susquehannock speaker in about the 70s, or someone's Iroquoian-based conlang, which has also happened before with Poliespo, or involves a family idiolect of Cherokee that ended up in Pennsylvania with a change of name to something local also starting with a C. In any of those cases, this is not what is known as Conestoga, Susquehannock, or Andaste.

MT301 (talk) 20:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

The modern Conestoga-Susquehannock tribe itself does not purport to have even close to a complete language, let alone any “native” speakers. They even list documents and confirm descended families who were officially documented as Native and list those who participated in the 1845 Conestoga land claims and the 1872 joint resolution. If there were truly any Native speakers remaining they would be known to the tribe and there would certainly be more than one single source claiming any knowledge beyond the existing materials. Even the 1757 record of the language spoken at Conestoga town made by interviewing Bill Sack (killed in the 1763 massacre) consisted not of Conestoga but largely Mingo language. 2600:100E:B06C:AE14:D116:6F28:1B2F:856A (talk) 21:36, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Get over yourself. There is a whole community of speakers. We are still here. This is the truth. The argument you make about circularity is invalid. It is the ignorance and arrogance of the colonizer speaking through you. Scott Conestoga (talk) 11:56, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

This is not a conlang. People who are Conestoga have way better things to do with their time than create a conlang or try to perpetuate a hoax. Scott Conestoga (talk) 11:59, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I understand that there might be concern on your part due to lack of understanding and knowledge of Conestoga Language and Culture. However, academics and enrolled American Indians have been contacted and shown information that is not yet been given to people who are not academics and are not Native American. Why are you incredulous to the possibility that white academics could have been wrong since 1763 about the survival of Conestoga Language and Culture? Do you speak any Iroquoian languages or do you merely speculate about them? If you are not Native, why are you so concerned about being right regarding the veracity of the facts of the survival of Conestoga people and Conestoga Language to the present? The truth is being presented to you and you cringe. Scott Conestoga (talk) 12:09, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Northern Iroquoian and Lake Iroquoian

There's something off with the family tree. If Tuscarora–Nottoway is part of Lake Iroquoian too, as claimed in this edit, and so are the unclassified languages, the label "Lake Iroquoian" is redundant, because it is then synonymous with "Northern Iroquoian".

I don't have access to the original sources right now, but I'm inclined to think this is simply incorrect and Lake Iroquoian encompasses only Iroquois Proper and Huronian, compare Proto-Iroquoian language § Subdivisions. According to the page linked, there's even doubt about "Lake Iroquoian" as a valid clade, so it's better to limit rather than extend its scope. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:07, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

That edit was undone long ago, in that no source (to my knowledge) puts Tuscarora-Nottoway as within Lake Iroquoian. The closest is the referenced Julian work, but that doesn't put Tuscarora-Nottoway within Lake Iroquoian either, but denies Lake Iroquoian is a grouping at all. For Julian, all of the Northern Iroquoian languages are direct descendants or sub-groupings of Northern, no Lake at all

MT301 (talk) 13:43, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

That edit wasn't undone long ago, but specifically by me in late March. The tree still showed Tuscarora–Nottoway and all the unclassified languages as within Lake Iroquoian through its nesting structure. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:29, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, either my correction itself was undone, or maybe I just didn't save it. But yes, Lake = Iroquois Proper + Huronian (no Tuscarora). Northern = Lake + Tuscarora-Nottoway. The table nesting as of the moment I'm writing this looks correct

MT301 (talk) 16:52, 7 May 2023 (UTC)