Embedded Files
Click on the links in each section below to learn more about language and tigers!
Bangla word for 'tiger'
About Bangla Language
Bangla is the official national language of Bangladesh and one of the many language spoken in India, too. It is the official administrative state language of the districts of Assam, West Bengal, and Kachar. Bangla is a language in the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by over 230 million people!
Language Rights and International Mother Language Day
In 1947, when Pakistan was created, it was separated into East and West Pakistan. In East Pakistan, the people were both Hindu and Muslim and spoke Bangla. After the government of Pakistan declared Urdu, the language spoken mostly by Muslims, the country's official language, Bengali people protested. In 1952, on February 21st, protests resulted in deaths. These protests, coupled with ideological and religious differences, eventually resulted in the separation of East Pakistan and the establishment of Bangladesh as an independent nation.
International Mother Language Day, celebrated annually on February 21, was born of the sacrifice of the Bangla speaking martyrs. In 1999, UNESCO officially proclaimed February 21 International Mother Language Day!
The word for 'tiger' in Bangla is written above in the Bangla script (or orthography/writing system).
In International Phonetic Alphabet, an alphabet linguists use to represent the sounds (not the writing system) of a language or word, this word is represented as [baag].
Notice that the vowel is longer than English vowels and the IPA representation shows this.
Below is a spectrogram (a waveform at the top and a view of the formants (pitches) of the vowels) of the word [baag].
Listen to a pronunciation of the word [baag].
Tigers in Bangladesh
Tigers are indigenous to Bangladesh and to the state of West Bengal in India. The population of tigers in Bangladesh is estimated to be between 300 and 500 and in India, there are estimated to be around 2500-3400 tigers.
The specific tiger subspecies is P. t. tigris and the population is called the 'Bengal tiger'. Bengal tigers are an endangered species. If you would like to learn more about the status of Bengal tigers, visit the World Wildlife Day website.
Did you know tigers like to swim‽ They are one of the few cats who do.
(Psst....the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence above is called an 'interrobang'. It is a combination of a question mark and a exclamation point. )
At Idaho State University, we celebrate linguistic diversity! We celebrate Indigenous Mother Language Day with a language fair (games and prizes!) in the student union each February. In October, we also celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. ISU is a place where all are welcome and can find a community with which they belong.
Newe (Shoshone) word for 'tiger'
Image of the National Seal of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.
About Shoshoni Language
Shoshoni (Newe) is a Native American language originally spoken in the northern plains and intermountain west region of North America, covering what would become parts of Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. Newe is a member of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, related to Comanche, Paiute, and Bannock. There are approximately 5000 speakers of Newe, though estimates vary. Newe is one of the languages used to teach students at the Chief Tahgee immersion school in Fort Hall.
There is no word for 'tiger' in Shoshone.
Language ideologies, language shift, and words for things not originally in a language
It is not uncommon for some Native and other Indigenous languages to not have words for things not named in the language prior to colonization. Often speakers in a community will decide that words for things that were not originally present in a language do not belong in the language. This is a type of purist language ideology commonly and understandably found in communities experiencing language shift. The language becomes a precious commodity that some people feel must remain free from outside influence--a symbol of persistence and resistance to colonization.
Native American boarding schools and languages
Language shift occurs when speakers shift from one language to another, often due to push factors that force them to give up the language or pull factors that draw them to a new language. One push factor for language shift for many Native American communities was the forced assimilation, including language assimilation, that occurred due to forced attendance at boarding schools where students were punished for speaking their first/home language.
The students in these schools were often so psychologically harmed that they refused to speak their Native languages with their children or grandchildren later in life. This effectively disrupted the transmission of the language from one generation to the next and pushed language shift. To learn more about the Native American boarding school era, policies that informed boarding school practices, and their impacts on language speakers in the past and the lingering impacts on communities today, watch this video available on Idaho PBS or this video on YouTube.
Idaho State University's Land Acknowledgment
Acknowledging Native lands is an important way to honor and respect Indigenous peoples and their traditional territories. The land on which Idaho State University’s Pocatello campus sits is within the original Fort Hall Reservation boundaries and is the traditional and ancestral home of the Shoshone and Bannock peoples. We acknowledge the Fort Hall Shoshone and Bannock peoples, their elders past and present, their future generations, and all Indigenous peoples, including those upon whose land the University is located. We offer gratitude for the land itself and the original caretakers of it.
As a public research university, it is our ongoing commitment and responsibility to teach accurate histories of the regional Indigenous people and of our institutional relationship with them. It is our commitment to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and to ISU’s citizens that we will collaborate on future educational discourse and activities in our communities. To learn more about the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, including their economic contributions to the region, visit their website.
Learn Shoshone!
If you are interested in Native American histories (notice this is plural) or Native American languages, consider taking one of the courses offered through ISU's Anthropology Department like Shoshone I and Shoshone II or even completing a Shoshoni language Associates of Arts degree.
Chahta (Choctaw) word for ‘tiger’
About Chahta Language
The Chahta language is a Native American language from the Muskogean language family, closely related to Chickasaw, Creek, and Mikasuki, among others. It was originally and still is spoken in the southeast of North America, in the area that would become known as ‘Mississippi’, where the Pearl River reservation still resides. Due to removal politics, a large portion of the Chahta community was forcibly relocated to Indian Territory, what would become known as ‘Oklahoma’ and is now also spoken by Chahta communities in Louisiana, Texas, and California!
Tigers and circuses and cemeteries
While many Native American languages do not have words for animals, plants, and things not found in their environment before colonization, others do! Some language communities are developing new words for new things or ‘modernizing’ their languages. Chahtas may have seen tigers earlier than even some Europeans. The overwintering location for many circuses, when they were still traveling by rail, is in Hugo, Oklahoma, in the heart of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. There is even a circus cemetery there where many circus animals are buried.
Chahtas have had a word for 'tiger' for over 150 years!
The Chahta word for tiger is: koi
In International Phonetic Alphabet, it is represented as: [koi]
Headstone from the Hugo Circus Cemetery.
Here is an image of a spectrogram (an waveform at the top and a representation of the ‘formants’ or pitches in the vowel sounds) of Dr. Redd saying the word ‘koi’.
The short burst of sound at the left/beginning is the aspiration of the [k] sound. The tall waves in the center that taper off toward the right are the vowels.
See how the formants bend apart as the vowel moves from [o] to [i]. This is because vowels have multiple pitches and the pitch at the top of the range for [o] is much lower than the pitch at the top of the range for [i].
Listen to a pronunciation the word [koi]
If you are interested in this, you might want to take ANTH/LANG 4455: Phonetics or even add a linguistics minor to your degree!
Diné (Navajo) word for ‘tiger’
About Diné Language
Diné Bizaad is a Native American language from this Na-Dene language family. It has been spoken since time immemorial in the southwest of North America, in the areas that would come to be known as Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Making new words for 'tiger' (Neologism)
Diné is a very creative language and is known for making new words for new things and concepts. The practice of making new words is called 'neologism'.
The Diné word for 'tiger' is náshdóítsoh noodǫ́zígíí.
Loosely translated, it means "big striped cat".
Listen to the word pronounced by Dr. Aresta Tsosie-Paddock, a Diné Bizaad speaker and Assistant Professor at University of Arizona!
Language Types
One of the reasons that people who speak Diné can be so creative with making new words is because Diné is a polysynthetic language. That means that lots of bits of meaning (morphemes) can be in just one word and a word can even be an entire sentence. Diné also builds most words out of verbs rather than nouns. It is a 'verb-heavy' language.
Some languages only have one (or very few) bit(s) of meaning allowed in a word.
Mandarin and English are considered 'isolating' languages, as they only allow a few bits of meaning per word. Others, like 'Turkish' are considered to be 'agglutinative'--they can have more bits of meanings per word. Languages like Diné and Inuktitut can have lots of bits of meaning per word and often these bits of meaning blend into each other around the edges (that's called 'fusion'). These characteristics of languages are really not discrete categories, but are on a continuum. Many, but not all, Native North American languages are polysynthetic.
For more on the Diné language, visit the Navajo Nation language website. To see an example of an explanation of the Diné word for 'tiger', visit the Diné language version of wikipedia, wikiibíídiiya! There you can read all about the word 'tiger' in Diné in Diné!
At Idaho State University, our faculty research language, culture, and history through an interdisciplinary lens and collaborate with other faculty across the state, across the country, and around the globe! We use our research to inform our teaching and to create research opportunities for undergraduate students.
Irish (Gaeilge) word for 'tiger'
About Irish Language
Gaelic (or Irish) is the language spoken in Ireland and some parts of Northern Ireland (and other places around the world). Irish is a member of the Celtic language family, related to Scots Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton (spoken in France) and some formerly dormant languages, like Manx, which is being revived!
Borrowing the word for 'tiger'
Rather than creating their own words for things not originally found in their environments or cultures, some language communities just borrow the word from another language. Gaelic speakers did just this, but a long time ago (from Old French spoken by people in England from the 11th to the 15th centuries).
The Irish word for 'tiger' is 'tíogair'.
In IPA the sounds of the word would be represented as [tigɚ] and sounds like this.
Language Revitalization
The process by which communities attempt to revive their languages and create new speech communities is called language revitalization.
Most Irish people spoke Irish until the English landlord system (colonization) in the 1800s. In the last part of the 20th century, people fought to regain the language and now many schools teach only in Irish. Today, there are more than 70,000 speakers of Irish who use it daily and over 1.5 million who consider themselves speakers.
The language is still in danger, though, as colonialization has disrupted its daily use and pull factors (factors that pull people away from a language or practice, such as economics--the need to work in another language) influence speakers' daily use of the language. Like the Bengal tiger, Irish is considered endangered.
If you are interested in learning more about Irish language revitalization, you can watch this video.
If you are interested in how other language communities revive their languages, you might want to take the course Indigenous Languages, Lands, and Cultural Revival, offered through the Anthropology Department at Idaho State University.
IsiXhosa word for 'tiger'
About Xhosa Language
IsiXhosa, also called Xhosa, is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family, closely related to Zulu, and spoken in South Africa and Zimbabwe. IsiXhosa spoken as a first language by over 7-8 million people and as a second language by 11 million people. The Xhosa language is tied with another Bantu language for having the most click consonants in that family.
The Xhosa word for 'tiger' is: ingwe.
In International Phonetic Alphabet, the sounds of the word would be represented as [iŋgwe].
About Click Consonants
A click consonant is a sound that is made by creating suction in the mouth and releasing it, without ever using airflow from the lungs. To hear what clicks sound like (and see how they are made in the mouth), visit the Seeing Speech website, where you can also listen to the pulmonic (using airflow from the lungs) consonants and vowels, too.
You can also listen to Mirian Makeba sing Qonqothwane (the Click Song) to hear what these clicks sound like in sentences and fluent speech. These sounds are borrowed from the Khoisan languages, close neighbors of the Xhosa speakers. Xhosa is also a tonal language, too!
Nelson Mandela in later years.
Languages in Movies
The IsiXhosa language is a real, 'natural' language used in the Marvel movies for the language of the fictional Wakandan people.
Other movie writers (and book authors), though, actually create new languages for their fictional worlds. These are called conlangs (constructed languages). To learn more about some famous movie and book conlangs, listen to John McWhorter's short TedEd video "Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki, and Na'vi real languages?" .
Tigers, Leopards, and Nelson Mandela
This translation of 'tiger' as 'ingwe', though, is a bit controversial. In other related languages, 'ingwe' means 'leopard'. There are plenty of leopards in southern Africa, but tigers are not considered indigenous to this region. At least one author traces the distinction between isiXhosa terms 'ingwe' for 'tiger' and 'ihlozi' for 'leopard' to an 1846 dictionary by John Ayliff, an English Wesleyan Methodist missionary.
Missionaries were often the first to write down words in Indigenous languages around the world and they didn't always know enough about the cultures and languages they were recording to get everything 100% correct. Ayliff also founded a Methodist school, called Healdtown, in Eastern Cape Province in South Africa that opened in 1855. In 1956, the government took over running the school after the 1953 Bantu Education Act, as part of the country's apartheid system of racial segregation, required all non-white children to be educated in state-run schools. Nelson Mandela, a leader in the fight to end apartheid and South Africa's first democratically elected president, is one of the former students of Healdtown.
The words for 'tiger' and 'leopard' in Xhosa, however they came to be, are now considered by most Xhosa speakers to be acceptable words. In fact, Nelson Mandela, who was often called a 'tiger' as a metaphor for his fierce fight against apartheid , is even quoted as saying in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom:
"I maintained that while there were no tigers to be found in contemporary Africa, there was a Xhosa word for tiger, a word different from the one for leopard, and that if the word existed in our language, the creature must once have existed in Africa. Otherwise, why would there be a name for it?"
If you are interested in constructing a language as part of a world you are building, you might want to take ANTH/ENGL/LANG 1107--Nature of Language. Constructing a language is one of the project options for that class.
Manchu-Jurchen word for 'tiger'
About Manchu-Jurchen Language
Manchu-Jurchen is a language of the East Asian Tungusic language family, originally spoken in Manchuria in Northeast China. It was once the official language China under part of the early Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
Manchu-Jurchen dialects
Manchu-Jurchen is, like many languages, not really just one language, but a group of dialects. Dialects are varieties of a language that are spoken by people in different geographic regions. Manchu-Jurchen today has mainly two varieties: Manchu and Xibe. Xibe is spoken in the cabcal sibe beye dasangga siyan (Quapqal Xibe Autonomous County in Xinjiang Province. There are currently not many first language speakers of Manchu, but there are a few thousand second language speakers. Xibe has thousands of first language speakers.
The word for 'tiger' in the Deretu dialect of Manchu-Jurchen is: tasha.
This word is represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [tɑsˈxɑ]. Hear this word spoken by Manchu speaker Robert William Autry!
Here is an example sentence from this dialect using the word for 'tiger' (bolded):
When the bits of meaning in a sentence or word are aligned as in the example above, this is called an interlinear gloss. Notice that the spelling and the sounds don't always match and how some of the bits of meaning change form.
Manchurian (Amur) Tigers
While Bengal Tigers are not indigenous to Manchuria, China, Russia, and Siberia, the Amur Tiger (sometimes called the Manchurian or Siberian Tiger) is. The Amur/Manchurian Tiger is extremely endangered, but there are still tigers out there. One was captured on video in 2016. Captivity programs are attempting to keep these tigers alive through breeding programs, one of which has successfully resulted in several 5 new cubs in 2018. Tiger can often grow larger than the Bengal Tiger when in captivity, with the largest recorded weighing in at 660 pounds!
Tigers, Religion, Power, and Warriors
Some Tungusic ethnic groups believed that tigers have human behaviors. They believed that tigers are not only dangerous but can become "spiritually charged" and can house spirits beyond their own. Some Tungusic ethnic groups also believed that tigers (and bears) were ancestors. Tigers symbolize bravery, strength, and good fortune for many people in China. During the Qing dynasty, there was even a battalion of soldiers known as the 'Tigers of War' who wore tiger styled uniforms. This name was given to them by Europeans, and is not a Manchu or Chinese name. A name given to a group by outsiders is called an 'exonym'. A name people give themselves is an 'endonym'. In 1899, there was another battalion, under Empress Cixi, of all Manchu soldiers who were called the 'Tiger Spirit Battalion".
Location of Manchuria (in red) in relation to China.
Silk textile from the Qing dynasty featuring a tiger.
If you are interested in figuring out which parts of the sentence mean which words/bits of meaning and why they change, you might want to take a course on Phonology & Morphology!
Ukrainian word for 'tiger'
About Ukrainian Language
Ukranian language is an Eastern Slavic language of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language of Ukraine and is related to, but not the same as, Russian. Like Bangla, it uses a different script (orthography or writing system). It uses the Cyrillic alphabet. About 40 million people speak Ukrainian.
The Ukrainian word for 'tiger' is тигр.
In International Phonetic Alphabet, it is represented as [tyhr].
Rescuing tigers in Ukraine!
As the war in Ukraine continues (in 2022), there are actually efforts to rescue big cats, including tigers, from zoos to safer locales.
Origins of the word 'tiger'
The word for 'tiger' in Ukrainian, though it looks and sounds a bit like the English word, is not likely a borrowing. The word for 'tiger' in English comes from Old French, which developed from Latin. Latin borrowed the word from Greek. The Greek word for 'tiger', 'tigris', may have developed from Old Persian 'tigra' (meaning "sharp"). All of these languages are Indo-European, so it is likely that the reason the words in modern Indo-European languages are all similar may be because they all come from the same original source language (proto-language).
If you want to learn more about the etymology (origins and development over time) of words, visit the Oxford English Dictionary or click on the image of the Indo-European family tree to visit the History of English podcast!
If you are interested in the history of languages, you might want to study Historical Linguistics or the History of the English Language, both of which are classes offered at Idaho State University!
Nahuatl word for 'tiger'
A tiger/jaguar mask drawing on pre-colonial dance traditions, part of the collection of masks at the Mexic-Arte Museum in Texas.
About the Nahuatl Languages
Nahuatl is a group of languages, that includes Aztec, of the Uto-Aztecan language family. This is the same family as the Shoshoni language belongs to. The language group is indigenous to Central America, mainly in what is now known as central and western Mexico. There are currently about 1.7 million speakers of Nahuatl languages.
One Nahuatl word for 'tiger' is tecuani, sometimes spelled tekuani.
This word, used for 'tiger' or 'jaguar', actually means "one who eats people"!
In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), this would be represented as [tekuani].
Notice that the IPA symbols for this word look very similar to the spelling of the word because the writing system for Nahuatl uses the Latin alphabet and the IPA symbols are based on (but not identical to) the Latin alphabet. Click here to learn more about the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Language Diversity and Prestige Languages
Throughout Mexico, there are 11 indigenous language families, with 68 distinct languages containing 364 dialects! The most commonly spoken Indigenous languages in Mexico are members of the Nahuatl group (23%). One of the language varieties, Huasteca Nahuatl, has over one million speakers.
In areas where multiple varieties of a language or multiple languages are spoken, one language often becomes a 'prestige language', used by the ruling class or for formal interactions or to indicate that someone is higher status than others. For example, in England, after the Norman Invasion in 1066, French became the prestige language, used at court and by Nobles. In Mexico, prior to colonization, when the Aztec empire had spread far and wide, Tenochtitlan Nahuatl become the prestige language throughout much of Mesoamerica. Even when prestige languages exist, though, many people hold tight to their variety of a language as a way to maintain their heritage and cultural identity.
Language Mixing and Contact: Pidgins, Creoles, and Lingua Francas
Most of the varieties of Nahuatl currently spoken show some influence from Spanish. Languages, like the cultures of the people who speak them, often mix with other languages when people come in contact. When this happens with cultural practices, we call that 'syncretism'. An example of syncretism is the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration in Mexico. It is a mixture of traditional ancestor worship religious practice and Catholic observance of All Souls Day.
When languages mix together, the first stage is usually called a 'pidgin'. This form is usually very minimal, with vocabulary from the dominant group and grammar from the less powerful group. Later, when the next generation starts speaking this language as its first language in the home, it becomes a 'creole'. Hawaiian Pidgin is actually a creole. Hawaiian Pidgin is a strong marker of ethnic identity for many Hawaiians.
When people come into contact, sometimes, they choose only one of the languages for everyone to use. This is called a 'lingua franca'. Often prestige languages or dialects are used as the lingua franca. English is widely considered a global economic lingua franca currently. In the pre-colonial period in North America, there were several lingua francas used, including Mobilian Jargon, used in the southeast. Tenochtitlan Nahuatl would have been the lingua franca of Mesoamerica during the Aztec Empire.
Since colonization, the Nahuatl languages have been heavily influenced by Spanish. The Nahuatl languages, though, haven't just been influenced by Spanish. Spanish has been influenced by Nahuatl. Through Spanish, English also contains several borrowed Nahuatl words. Some of those words include: Aztec, avocado, chili, chipotle, chocolate, coyote, guacamole, and tomato.
If you are interested in learning more about the history and cultures of Mesoamerica, you might want to take a course at Idaho State University like ANTH 2239 Latino Peoples and Cultures.
Mapuche word for 'tiger'
A cave painting of a Patagonian tiger from la Cueva de los Yaguaretes (the Cave of the Tigers) in southern Patagonia.
About the Mapuche Language
The Mapuche language is a member of the Araucanian language family, indigenous to Chile and parts of Argentina. It is currently spoken by an estimated 120,000 people. There may be more people who are 'passively bilingual', speaking Spanish but understanding and not speaking Mapuche.
The Mapuche word for 'jaguar' (or 'Patagonian tiger') is nahuel.
In International Phonetic Alphabet, this word's sounds would be represented as [najuel].
Paleo peoples, Paleo Animals, and Archaeology
The Mapuche people have a word for 'jaguar' but there are no jaguars living in the area of Patagonia (southern Argentina and Chile) now. The jaguar, or Patagonian panther (a subspecies of the Panthera atrox, American lion) is believed to have lived during the late Pleistocene era, from about 1.8 million years ago to about 11,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age. At this time, often called the 'Paleo' era, there were many big cats in Patagonia. There were also many other megafauna (very large animals) in the Americas, like the giant sloth, which may have been food for the Patagonian panther.
Some early archaeologists previously thought that humans, ancestors of the Mapuche speaking people, arrived in the area well after the jaguar would have died out. However, there is rock art from the region, from a cave known as Cueva de los Yaguaretes (Jaguar's Cave), that suggests people and jaguars were living in the region at the same time. In 2010, archaeologists have found fossilized human footprints in Chile that indicate humans have been in the area for over 15,000 years. Some scientists believe that humans have likely been in Patagonia for at least 35,000 years, much earlier than previously thought.
Oral Traditions and History
So, if jaguars died out 8,000 years ago, why would the word for jaguar still exist today in the Mapuche language? Maybe the big cats were around more recently than previously thought. Some Spanish colonizer written records from the 18th century included descriptions of 'tigers' and other big cats, but reports of big cats ended in the early 19th century. Maybe the people who still have a word for this animal have long memories.
The 'oral tradition', or the stories people tell within their cultures, are how people keep track of and remember their origins and histories if they don't have writing. Often, these stories contain references to animals no longer found in their region and events from a really long time ago (longer than any person could remember or even before their grandparents' lifetimes). We think of them as 'just stories', but they often hold truths about lifeways, migrations, and the environment. African oral traditions have long been understood to store information from a very long time ago, including detailed family histories. Native peoples of the Americas also have oral traditions that rival the written historical record. Click here to read an interesting explanation of the meanings and importance of oral traditions to Native and First Nations peoples from a Mi'kmaq author.
If you are interested in learning more about the importance of the oral tradition, consider taking the course ANTH 4452 Native American Verbal Arts! If you are interested in learning more about pre-history and archaeology, you might want to take ANTH 2203 Discover Archaeology!
Lutruwita (Tasmanian) word for 'tiger'
About the Tasmanian Languages
The languages of Lutruwita (Tasmania) may have numbered between 8 and 16 and may even have represented several language families. Unfortunately, these languages are no longer being spoken. The last speaker of one of these languages, Flinders Islands lingua franca, is believed to have been Fanny Cochrane Smith, who passed on in 1905. The evidence of her speaking and of this language remain in some recordings of songs on wax cylinder. In fact, these are the only recordings of any Tasmanian languages.
For this reason, we do not know what the word for 'tiger' is in any of the Tasmanian languages.
There would almost certainly have been a word for 'tiger' or something close to it, though. There were "tigers" in Tasmania until 1936.
Lutruwita, Tasmanian, Indigenous, and more--What's in a Name?
Lutruwita is the name the Indigenous people of Tasmania have for themselves. It is an 'endonym' or insiders name. An 'exonym' is the name people are given by others outside of their community. For example, the name the Shoshone people have for themselves is Newe. The name the Navajo people have for themselves is Diné.
Some people wonder about what to call Indigenous or Native peoples and worry that they won't use the correct term. 'Indigenous' is a term that broadly means people who have lived in an area before colonization or who have a history of living in a place for 'time immemorial' (for as long as their history recounts). It should be capitalized when referring to peoples as a sign of respect. 'Native' is a general term for people indigenous (here the refers to a general condition of having been in a place, so it is not capitalized) to the part of North America that is now called the United States. 'First Nations' is a term used by some people for the Indigenous peoples of the region now known as Canada. 'Aboriginal' is an adjective used to describe peoples indigenous to Australia and Tasmania. In general, though, it is better to call a people by the name they have for themselves than by some outsider or general term.
Fanny Cochrane (1834-1905), the last speaker of a Tasmanian Language, by J. W. Beattle.
A Tasmanian Tiger in Australia's Hobart Zoo
Extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger
The Tasmanian Tiger isn't really a tiger, but was called a 'tiger' because of the stripes across its back. It sort of looked like a dog and so was sometimes also called a Tasmanian Wolf. A thylacine, a wolflike marsupial, the Tasmanian Tiger was a mammal with a pouch in which very young offspring continued to grow. It used to be found all over Australian and the island just south of it, Tasmania.
After humans arrived in Australia, which is believed to have happened between 40 and 50 thousand years ago, they started hunting the Tasmanian Tiger. Researchers believe that human hunting and predation by the dingo, a wild dog, caused the Tasmanian Tiger's extinction in Australia and eventually also in Tasmania. The last Tasmanian tiger died captive in a zoo in 1936. However, some scientists have tried to bring the species back through via extraction of DNA from samples and cloning (that didn't go so well in the fictional movie series Jurassic Park! ). So far, they have had no success.
Language Documentation, Reconstruction, and Sovereignty
Though the Tasmanian languages are no longer around, we don't call them 'extinct'. Instead, most linguists (people who study languages) call language which no longer have speakers 'sleeping'. This is because, if there is enough documentation, a sleeping language can be brought back by a community. For the Tasmanian languages, though, this is an uphill climb. The only documentation of these languages are very small word lists, some inventories of the sounds, and some details of their grammars. These are very incomplete. These word lists were compiled by European explorers during the 18th century. The people making these word lists spoke English, Scots Gaelic, Danish, and French. Each tried to represent the sounds of the languages in their own languages' spelling systems. This would make comparing the sounds across word lists very difficult. It would also make figuring out exactly what the original sounds were very difficult. This is one reason that linguists now use a standardized system for representing sounds in any language: The International Phonetic Alphabet. Having one standard system means that any linguist can read another linguists' transcriptions (written representation/records) and know exactly which sounds are being represented.
Despite these obstacles, since the 1990s, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has reconstructed Palawa kani ('Tasmanian Aborigines speak'), a language based on the available descriptions and word lists that is really a composite of the different languages that once existed in this family. The Centre, though, does not share information about the language outside of the community at this point, as is their right. The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that communities should have control over their own cultural intellectual property and that includes languages. The ability of a community to control its own language, including who learns it, who studies it or writes about it, and what happens with it, is called 'linguistic sovereignty'. Language work in support of revitalization can also support Indigenous governance and sovereignty.
Language Change and "Authenticity"
Some people might argue that a reconstructed language is not "authentic", that a language shouldn't be spoken if it can't be perfectly like it once was. For example, some community members criticize the speech of learners of the Gaelic languages, calling them 'new speakers'. Another way to think about language, though, is to understand that language is always changing. If a language is being used by people in their daily lives, small changes in pronunciation happen, new words get added, and slang becomes normal speech. For example, in English, words like 'advertising' and 'arch-villain,' 'bedazzled', 'eyeball', and 'fashionable' and phrases like 'hot-blooded' were once new terms made up by Shakespeare in his plays but are now common English phrases. If a language is being used, it changes. If a language is not changing, it is in danger.
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