Humanities Homework Help

You will need to consult 3 or 4 separate ONLINE sources (PLEASE INCLUDE ALL CITATIONS), [ONLINE SOURCES have citations]  Your references section for this assignment should include the bibliographic information for those sources [MAKE SURE TO CITE YOUR SOURCES!]. For this assignment you can use reference books, or any search engine. I am including TWO references below, but you will have to find the third or fourth on your own (you can call/visit your local library for example) [USE THE PUBLIC LIBRARY WITH YOUR LIBRARY CARD!].

• ANY search engine (BUT you MUST include the source). 
• Print reference books are available in the Oviatt Library’s Learning Commons (books on the first floor of the library) or
• Reference e-books are available via the library’s website: http://library.calstate.edu/northridge/databases/subject/reference-resources (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Gale Virtual Reference Library, Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Reference, or SAGE Knowledge)
• AT THE LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY you may find the following source: Bright, William O. 2005.  “North American Indian Languages.” In The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia. vol. 22
• Finally, remember you can use basic Google search, but be careful with this because the results are not always reliable so you will have to conduct a cross-reference check (especially when a source tells you that the information is UNKNOWN).

1. U.S. State Names: How many out of 50 are in Indigenous languages? 

Find out which of the 50 states of the United States have names of American Indian origin—in other words, which ones (how many?) come originally from words in American Indigenous languages. Use a dictionary or encyclopedia from the reference collection (print or ebook).

The reference sources should identify etymologies (word origins) for place names (with source languages and words, usually with their meanings).

Tell what your source says about each state name in an Indigenous Language origin: Find the following information in your answer for FULL credit.

• 1. What language is it derived from? 
• 2. What is the original word from which the state name came?
• 3. What did the original word mean?
• 4. Add an interesting note that you learned about this word/name? There is a LOT you can say here, so I encourage you to include the most interesting observations in this box. 
• 5. Classification, every language has a classification because every language belongs to a LANGUAGE FAMILY. For example, the Zapotec language belongs to the Otomanguean family of languages. Every Indigenous language belongs to a language family, so I am asking you to find the language family to which the STATE NAME IN AN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE BELONGS TO [please see the example below] This will be the most challenging part, and thus, YOU MUST INCLUDE the citation for the source where you found this information (see the example below).

(For some words, etymologies are controversial and often sources say UNKNOWN, but the information DOES exist, you just have to find it (thus, research).  Many of these items are reported quite inaccurately in dictionaries and particularly in unofficial ONLINE SOURCES, as we’ll see, but you should be accurate in quoting your source!  Note, too, that some names may have been borrowed first into another language (such as French or Spanish, BUT LOOK FOR THE NATIVE LANGUAGE ORIGIN) before being borrowed into English.  We are interested here in the original language source). You will find State Names that are NOT in an Indigenous language like CALIFORNIA, so you do not need to include this in your list because it is NOT an Indigenous Language.

Then, give the classification for the LANGUAGE FAMILY according to your Reference Sources for as many of these languages as you can.  SEE THE EXAMPLE BELOW (the example is from an encyclopedia). FACT: Every language belongs to a language family.

A good way to answer these questions could be to create a table with 6 columns, as below: 

State Name

< Language

Original Word or Phrase

Meaning

Notes

Classification

Alabama

Choctaw

Alba ayamule.

‘I make a clearing.’

Originally, two indigenous language words 1. alba and 2. ayamule, but it was turned into one “English” word!

Muskogean family, Macro-Algonkian stock source: (Bright 2005)

(Note: this assignment does not ask you to discover what NATIVE AMERICANS formerly lived in the various states, or to discover the origins of any state names which are not of INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE origin, or to discover which state names not of NATIVE LANGUAGE origin may have been used to refer to NATIVE groups.  For example, Delaware is the name of an INDIGENOUS society, but it is not an NATIVE AMERICAN word (as a GOOD reference source should confirm), so you should not include it in your list.  If you want to include additional etymologies for the state names not of INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE origin in your answer, please separate them in your answer from the etymologies that are relevant for this assignment.

INCLUDE A BIBLIOGRAPHY AND Cite the references you consulted using a standard bibliographic format, e.g.

Bright, William O. 2005.  “North American Indian Languages.” In The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia. vol. 22:762-767.

AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasConnecticutHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyMassachusetMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriNebraskaNew MexicoNorth and South DakotaOhioOklahomaTennesseeTexasUtahWisconsin