Comanche Language
Comanche ( /kəˈmæntʃiː/) is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche people, who split off from the Shoshone soon after they acquired horses around 1705. The Comanche language and the Shoshoni language are therefore quite similar, although certain low-level consonant changes in Comanche have inhibited mutual intelligibility.
The name "Comanche" comes from the Ute word kɨmmantsi meaning "enemy, stranger". Their own name for the language is nʉmʉ tekwapʉ which means "language of the people".
Although efforts are now being made to ensure its survival, most speakers of the language are elderly, and less than one percent of the Comanche people can speak the language. In the late 19th century, Comanche children were placed in boarding schools where they were discouraged from speaking their native language, and even severely punished for doing so. The second generation then grew up speaking English, because of the belief that it was better for them not to know Comanche.
The Comanche language was briefly prominent during World War II. A group of seventeen young men referred to as the Comanche Code Talkers were trained and used by the U.S. Army to send messages conveying sensitive information in the Comanche language so that it could not be deciphered by the enemy.
Read more about Comanche Language: Syntax, Writing System, Examples
Famous quotes containing the words comanche and/or language:
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)