Language
Penobscot people historically spoke a dialect of Eastern Abenaki, an Algonquian language. It is very similar to the languages of the other members of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Currently, there are no fluent speakers and the last Penobscot speaker of Eastern Abenaki died in the 1990s. There is a dictionary, and the elementary school and the Boys and Girls Club on Indian Island are making an effort to reintroduce the language by teaching it to the children.
The Penobscot language uses a modified Roman alphabet with distinct characters used for making sounds that do not exist in the Roman alphabet.
Read more about this topic: Penobscot People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)
“Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)