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Order of the Arrow Admonition


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  • 4 weeks later...
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Dear all -

 

Kxiti nkski alnixsi! I speak some Lnape.

 

As someone pointed out - there are indeed modern speakers of Lenape, however, most do not live in ancestral lands (not to go all political here but little things like being forced off your land onto a Reservation and beaten by teachers for speaking one word of your native language are just a few of the reasons you don't hear it much anymore) Unami (mainly Southern) and Munsi are still spoken - not only in OK, but also in Reserves in Ontario.

 

The OA has borrowed just about all of its Lenape words from the Northern Unami dialect. The problem with that is that it was written by German and Dutch (and Swedish) Moravian Missionaries (members of the "United Brethren")and these guys were....well, Missionaries, not Linguists, so they wrote the language as they heard it with "German ears". The "Moravian spelling conventions", as they are called, do not completely convey the actual sounds of the language. For example, Lenape makes use of what are called "preaspirated consonants" (consonants preceded by a puff of air). If any of you know any Finnish, Finnish is perhaps the best example of a European language that does the same thing (this is the 'h' before consonants in Finnish). German ears probably heard this, but had no idea how to properly convey it in writing so they used the closest spelling convention they had (in this case the German hard 'ch' as in "acht" - eight). So, the 'ch' in Leanpe can have a few different pronunciations - you have to know which to use. There are some spelling conventions used with vowels as well - most notably the vowel spelt 'oa'(it's the 'aw' in "saw", or "law" - NOT two separate sounds, i.e. oh-ah).

 

The Moravian spellings and the lack of knowledge of proper Lenape grammar has resulted in, unfortunately, most Lenape OA words being passed down with very incorrect pronunciation (not to mention the travesty of "Lenape vigil names").

 

Unfortunately, the Admonition is one of the words pronounced incorrectly.

 

BTW - if anyone does wish to know how many of the Lenape OA words are pronounced (along with their modern Southern Unami forms) drop me a post - being a Linguist, I did a little "study" a while ago and would be happy to pass it along - sorry, but it will NOT contain the admonition - I will need to delete that from the list.

 

 

 

 

 

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Sorry, I should have added that modern Southern Unami uses a VERY nice, precise and easy to understand orthography - it much more clearly represents the sounds of the language.

 

This is the spelling I used at the beginning of my previous post.

 

 

 

 

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Nolesrule, my friend the witchdoctor, by the time I got to "bing bang" I had already started snorting tea out my nose. Thanks a whole lot ;) for teaching me what to say...and do.

BTW, I'm fairly sure that a certain tune is going to be my 'head music' for at least the rest of the day.

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I'll give it a try, but she's susceptible to the Child Behavior Uncertainty Principle, which states that the moment you try to record your child, inevitably she (as is this case) will change her behavior.

 

This is a variation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

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Living Bethlehem, PA, and serving a Troop sponsored by a Moravian Church, I know somethng of the Lenai Lenapes. Bethlehem is the home of the Northern Province of the Moravian Church in North America. The District Chair works for the Northern Province. In a downtown cemtery, knows as God's half acre, are the graves of some of the first Bethlehem residents. In true Moravian style, the males on one side and the women on the other. On the men's side is the grave of a Lenai, known as John. He is purported to be the model of Chingachgook in John Fenimore Cooper's "the leather stocking tales". Very cool set of books.

 

Then again, Treasure island is just down the Delaware a bit, not as far as Washington's Crossing

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  • 3 months later...

Due to bad pronunciation of the admonition at my ordeal, for more than a decade afterward, I thought it was the title to a very popular 1970's drama about a farm family struggling to make ends meet during the Great Depression with the word "All" placed in front of that title. :)(This message has been edited by moxieman)

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As appealing of an admonition as that is (all-a-dook-a-haz-ar), I'm thinking The Dukes of Hazzard was definitely a 1980's tv "drama", and it was certainly not set in the Great Depression, since 1969 Dodge Chargers were not a common sight in the 1930's.

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Well technically it was a recession, the worst recession in the last 60 years. It was from November 1973 to March 1975, where real GDP fell by 4.9 percent. I remember the gas lines, inflation, high interest rates, those were the good old days! And the Dukes of Hazzard first aired in '79.

I like you admonition (all-a-dook-a-haz-ar) but where can I find the proper pronunciation of the real admonition?

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