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Article: Indian Languages
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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INDIAN LANGUAGES
INDIAN LANGUAGES.
Language is central to Indian identity. Although there are exceptions, in general, aboriginal group identity corresponded to the language that its members spoke. This tradition continues in that tribal designations often refer to language, even though in some cases few if any of its members may know the language.
At the time of the European contact, some 300 languages are estimated to have been in use among the indigenous habitants of the area north of Mexico and a surprisingly large number of these survive to the present day. In the 1990 U.S. census, 136 such languages were identified as household languages by respondents. Although census figures may ...