Language
The Quileute tribe speaks a language called Quileute or Quillayute which is part of the Chimakuan family of languages. The Chimakum, who also spoke a Chimakuan language (called Chemakum, Chimakum, or Chimacum) were the only other group of people to speak a language from this language family. The Quileute language is still in use today, though it is an endangered language. It is spoken only by tribal elders at La Push, and some of the Makah. A unique feature of the Quileute language is the absence of nasal consonants, which are found in almost all other spoken languages of the world. The tribe is now trying to prevent the loss of the language by teaching it in the Quileute Tribal School using books written for the students by the tribal elders.
Read more about this topic: Quileute People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“I invented the colors of the vowels!—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)