By Justin Neely, CPN Language Director
It’s been a busy month for the language department. In December, we put the Potawatomi Youth Choir and Christmas caroling on hold due to the pandemic.
We recently finished up Popeye the Sailor as Aladdin in Potawatomi. This is a cute, 22-minute public domain cartoon we were able to put into Potawatomi with two versions: one with Potawatomi subtitles and one with English subtitles. You can watch this on cpn.news/jn, which is one of our two YouTube channels. There you can also see and hear the song Frosty the Snowman animated in Potawatomi. Check out all of our videos at cpn.news/langyt or cpn.news/jn.
We have been doing a regular live class through Zoom every Friday for those students who enjoy the live experience. After the Zoom ends, the CPN IT Department has set it up for us to be able to post each class on our YouTube channel at cpn.news/langyt.
We just finished a busy semester. This is the first year we had four different public school districts involved with our online self-paced high school course. It is available anywhere in the state of Oklahoma for world language credit, which counts toward graduation.
Also, we had one student at Arizona State University take our collegiate version for college credit.
Additionally, one of our team members, language aid Ragan Marsee, was interviewed by Oklahoma TV station News 9. She has used the language to train her dog.
Keep in mind, we have a lot of online platforms available to learn the language. Go to potawatomiheritage.com to see some of our amazing opportunities. Our Moodle course has had over 1,100 students, and 130 students have completed the course. There are Beginner I, Beginner II and Intermediate courses as well as a link to our children’s page. We also have a few courses on memrise.com, and don’t forget to check out our online dictionary at potawatomidictionary.com.
The language department wishes everyone a happy new year.
Make this year’s resolution to learn our language.