how similar are native american languages

The other 10% are using linguistically unsound methods--searching two languages for any two vocabulary words that begin with the same letter, essentially, and presenting them as evidence. "Such self-identified numbers should always be used with caution, since it begs several questions, including and rather importantly what it means to claim to be a speaker," he says. (1990). , a nonprofit organization devoted to documenting Amerindian languages, approximates that there are around 800 left today, and it lists 499 languages on its website. Sletcher, Michael, 'North American Indians', in Will Kaufman and Heidi Macpherson, eds.. Sturtevant, William C. "Navajo has no regular verbs," John H. McWhorter, associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, says via email. It caused Sapir to suggest that ultimately all Native American languages would turn out to be related. [8] The Indigenous languages of the Americas had widely varying demographics, from the Quechuan languages, Aymara, Guarani, and Nahuatl, which had millions of active speakers, to many languages with only several hundred speakers. It cannot be determined that these languages actually existed or that the few recorded words are actually of known or unknown languages. In America north of Mexico, more than 50 percent of the surviving languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers each. Na-Den and Algic have the widest geographic distributions: Algic currently spans from northeastern Canada across much of the continent down to northeastern Mexico (due to later migrations of the Kickapoo) with two outliers in California (Yurok and Wiyot); Na-Den spans from Alaska and western Canada through Washington, Oregon, and California to the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico (with one outlier in the Plains). Here is a list of the top 10 indigenous languages spoken in the United States according to the US census: Lets look at the top 4 most-spoken Native American languages and learn some basic phrases from each. Over 30,000 people speak one dialect of Sioux or another in the U.S. There is the very good technical grammar and dictionary by the late Robert Young and the late William Morgan 'The Navajo Language.' Saving America's Endangered Languages | Cultural Survival

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