It is uplifting to see a story about language on the front page of the newspaper. In " 'Genius Grant' a lift to linguist as she revives a native language", found here: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2010/09/28/reviving_wampanoag_earns_linguist_a_genius_grant/
"Jessie Little Doe Baird was overcome at the news that her 17 years of linguistic work — resurrecting the language the Wampanoag people spoke and wrote until at least the mid-1800s — had landed her a MacArthur Fellows “genius grant’’ of $500,000."
On its face, this is a story of the MacArthur Fellow "genius grant" awarded Baird for her work, but the more interesting content appears halfway through the piece, where several facets of a fascinating story emerge.
This is really the story of an ancient language (10,000 years old) that became a written language several hundred years ago, and what this means for a people (the Wampanoag) and the communities that have lived in southern New England since the time when the Wampanoag were the areas only human inhabitants.
"According to Baird, her ancestors were "the first American Indian people to use an alphabetic writing system," and the first Bible published on this continent -- a key document in her research -- was printed in 1663 in Wompanoag."
Baird explains the motivation for acquiring an alphabet and written language, which, she claims, was the legal protection of their resources. The result was a rich collection of the " land transfers, wills, personal letters," resulting in the “the largest collection of native written documents on the continent.’’
But there is also the sub-story, that I think deserves elaboration, of how Baird, a Cape Cod, high school educated, human service worker took on the task of resurrecting the lost Wampanoag language by becoming a MIT-trained linguist.
Finally, there is the other sub-story, described in one sentence, but worthy of many more, of how Baird came to devote her life to this project through a series of dreams in which her ancestors spoke to her in a language she could not understand.
What a delight of a story that could have been a series...or a book.
