Indian Influence Essay

This paper aims to discuss the question of to what extent the Indians ache influenced place names and the phraseology of American English. Considering that Native American Indians are the oldest people in America, it is natural that their language and culture have had somewhat influence upon the development of American English, as well as upon place names in America. It is believed that the first Native Americans arrived during the last ice-age, approximately 20,000 30,000 old age ago .There are a great number of American place names, including those of large cities and states, which have been named after Indian linguistic communication its estimated that at least half of the states get their names from Indian nomenclature. These involve Arizona, which comes from the Indian word Arizonac, which means little spring or preteen spring. Arizona has a history rich in legends of pertaining to the West. Here Indian chiefs Geronimo and Cochise led the fight against the frontiersm en.Tombstone, Arizona, was the site of the most famous shootout in the West, this being the gunfight at the O. K. Corral. Names of other states influenced by the Indians complicate Arkansas which comes from the Quapaw Indians, Iowa, which probably comes from an Indian name meaning this is the place or the Beautiful Land, Oklahoma, which is from two Choctaw Indian haggling meaning inflammation people, and Wyoming, which is from the Delaware Indian word meaning mountains and valleys alternating, just like the Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania.It can therefore be seen that the influence of American Indians has had quite a a large impact on the naming of places in America. The mental lexicon of American English has also been quite profoundly impacted. In a similar way that thousands of place names have been impacted by Indian words, so have many US English words have their roots in American Indian.These help in do the language the rich, cultural affair that it is today, and include n ot only words such as tomahawk from the Virginia Algonquian tamahaac, totem from the Ojibwa nindoodem, my totem, wampum from the Massachusetts peag , wigwam from the easterly Abenaki wikwom but also moccasin from the Virginia Algonquian moose from the Eastern Abenaki mos, papoose from the Narragansett papoos, child, pecan from the Illinois pakani which are used with relevance to everyday American things.The word Podunk, meant to describe an insignificant town out in the heart and soul of nowhere, comes from a Natick Indian word meaning swampy place. Many of these words borrowed from American Indians are nouns from the Algonquian languages that used to be common and wide spoken along the Atlantic coast. English colonists, who came across iar plants and animals which were strange to them at the time named them based on Indian terms. Naturally enough orthoepy changed and words were shortened in order to make them easier for the English tongue.solely the fact remains that their roots are in American Indian words. Conclusion This paper shows that the Indians have influenced both place names and the vocabulary of American English to a large degree.REFERENCESInfoplease, 2005 American Indian add Words, retrieved 8 whitethorn 2006 from the website http//www. infoplease. com/spot/aihmwords1. html Native Americans, 2005, The Bravest of the Brave, retrieved 8 whitethorn 2006 from the website http//www. nativeamericans. com/ Fact Monster, 2005, American Indian Place Names retrieved 8 May 2006 from the website http//www. factmonster. com/spot/aihmnames1. html