By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho jayek (Hello everyone),
We are getting ready to wrap up a six-week beginner course in person at the Cultural Heritage Center. Shelly Watson is teaching it. We are getting ready to start an intermediate/advanced online course which will be every Thursday from 3-5 p.m. Central time zone. This will be in person and online. Justin Neely will be teaching it. We will record as well and place it on our YouTube channel. Shelly will be doing an online beginner class from 5-7 p.m. starting Oct. 23 for six weeks.
We are also making preparations for our family game night Oct. 21. We will be playing bingo. Shelly and Josey have been working hard making some unique gifts as prizes. We plan on having food as well. If folks would like they can also bring a dish to share. It will be from 5-7 p.m. We hope to see you all there. If you have any questions about the family game night or other classes, please reach out to us at [email protected].
We are doing men’s drumming every two weeks from 4-5 p.m. If this is something that is of interest to you, let us know and we will get you the exact dates.
We have been working on a number of different individual projects. We are already in the planning stages of what had been an eight-week summer immersion. Based on the experience of the last three years, we are revamping it a little bit to make it a little more manageable for people coming in from outside the area. We are planning on doing two-week beginner immersion, which will focus heavily on VAI/VII verbs and vocabulary building, as well as common words and phrases. Then after a week off we will do a two-week intermediate class, which will focus on VTI/VTA verbs, as well as less common modes like dubitive and counterfactual. Also, we will be working on getting folks conversational in the language.
We are six weeks into our high school courses. We are currently offering the language at Shawnee, Tecumseh and North Rock Creek high schools. The students are progressing well.
Don’t forget to check out some of our online content. We have the dictionary at potawatomidictionary.com with over 10,000 words, many with audio files.
The site learning.potawatomi.org has a couple of different courses, like an introduction course, a grammar heavy course and a course for middle school age students. Make sure to check out the tags, which show words listed by categories (like nouns, weather, animals, nature, etc.). There is also a conjugation tool that is helpful for conjugating VTA verbs, which have over 34 different combinations in just the independent. We are still working on this to make it handle more irregular forms. Right now, it works best with verbs that end in ma.
Our newest course is at 7000.org. This course is designed with day-to-day sentences you might use in different places in your house. For example, in the kitchen there is gbekte ne? Are you hungry? Wegni je wjandayen? What are you cooking? It starts with rooms in the house and then expands out to areas in the community, such as a doctor’s visit or a trip to a restaurant.
Nasena: Be careful (Nah sin nah)
Dokem: Be quiet (Doe kum)
Kyénep: Hurry (Kay nup)
Mno waben: Good morning (Minoh wahbin)
Mno gishget: It’s a good/ beautiful day (Minoh geesh git)
Nekshe ibe: Look over there. (Nuk shay eebuh)
Gbekte ne?: Are you hungry? (Guh buck tay nay)