University Daily Kansan, November 19, 1981
Page 9
TURE
Baton
Forum
AS will national
CHOICE Kansas
portion
ing on
p.m. in
feature
actor of
Eight
Professor researches Indian languages
By PAM ALLOWAY Staff Reporter
Mary Haas has spent much of the last 50 years wandering around the backwaters of North America, collecting amphibians and recording their languages.
This semester she is also the Rose Morgan visiting professor from the University of California at Berkeley.
Haas, professor of linguistics,
specializes in North American Indian
and Far Eastern languages.
The visiting professorship is in memory of Morgan, who joined the KKM in 1904. She taught in the english department for 31 years and died in 1951.
Haas retired in 1977 and since then has been a visiting professor on campuses all over the country.
"Many American Indian languages are more complex than European ones." Haas said.
She said she first became interested in American Indian languages when she heard a noted
anthropologist and linguist, Edward Sapir, talk at the University of Chicago, where she was doing graduate work.
'After Sapir accepted a position at Yale University he took a group of his Chicago students to Yale to help in his research involving American students. Haas was one of those students and so began her life's work.
That work has proven to be a monumental task.
Though she said it was hard to know for sure, Haas estimated that there were approximately 750 American Indian languages still spoken and many more that would never be spoken again.
"Dozens and dozens of languages have died, and dozens and dozens are in the process of dying now," she said.
AFTER LOCATING native speakers of the language, Haas said she and other researchers would prepare grammar for the language, translate texts and write dictionary.
"The process can take years for one language," she said.
Haas said researchers also do comparative work between languages to find out how closely related they were.
Research starts with the location of speakers, she said.
"All you need are one or two that speak really well." she said.
Sometimes, to communicate with those one or two, translators have to be used.
In order to get information about the Natchez tribe, which lived in Mississippi, a Creek trier translator was used as a intermediary between Haas and a Natchez Indian, Watt Sam.
The Natchez language has since died out, but not before Haas published articles and gathered enough information for a dictionary which she hopes to publish sometime in the future, she said.
WHILE GATHERING information, researchers live either with the tribe or in a nearby town.
Haas said tribal members usually
welcomed researchers into their villages.
Most of the work is done with older members of the tribe, however.
"The elders are respected in the Indian society and are usually the ones with the widest vocabulary and collection of stories." Haas said.
The elderly were especially eager to talk to others about their language, Haas said, because they feared the language would die with them because of younger members' apparent lack of interest.
However, she said, in recent years younger people have shown an interest in preserving their languages and customs.
"Once a language is lost, it's irretrievable if there's no record of it anywhere." Haas said.
However, she added, recording the language was only a small part of preserving it.
"You don't learn a language out of a dictionary for grammar, you learn it by hearing it and interacting with others. You doesn't answer you, a person does."
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