Indigenous languages of the Americas

Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses that constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families, as well as many language isolates and unclassified languages.

Many proposals to group these into higher-level families have been made, such as in three macrofamilies of Eskimo–Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind. This scheme is rejected by nearly all specialists.

According to UNESCO, most of the indigenous American languages in North America are critically endangered, and many are already extinct. The most widely spoken indigenous language is Southern Quechua, with about 6 to 7 million speakers, primarily in South America.

Background

Thousands of languages were spoken by various peoples in North and South America prior to their first contact with Europeans. These encounters occurred between the beginning of the 11th century (with the Nordic settlement of Greenland and failed efforts at Labrador and Newfoundland) and the end of the 15th century (the voyages of Christopher Columbus). Several indigenous cultures of the Americas had also developed their own writing systems, the best known being the Mayan. The indigenous languages of the Americas had widely varying demographics, from the Quechua languages, Aymara, Guarani, and Nahuatl, which had millions of active speakers, to many languages with only several hundred speakers. After pre-Columbian times, several indigenous creole languages developed in the Americas, based on European, indigenous and African languages.

American language

American language or American languages may refer to:

See also

Native Americans in the United States

In the United States, Native Americans are considered to be people whose pre-Columbian ancestors were indigenous to the lands within the nation's modern boundaries. These peoples were composed of numerous distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups, and many of these groups survive intact today as sovereign nations. The terms Native Americans use to refer to themselves vary regionally and generationally, with many older Native Americans self-identifying as "Indians" or "American Indians", while younger Native Americans often identify as "Indigenous". Which terms should be used to refer to Native Americans has at times been controversial. The term "Native American" has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups, but has not traditionally included Native Hawaiians or certain Alaskan Natives, such as Aleut, Yup'ik, or Inuit peoples. Indigenous American peoples from Canada are known as First Nations.

Since the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas has led to centuries of exchange and adjustment between Old and New World societies. Most Native American groups had historically lived as hunter-gatherer societies and preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, which has resulted in the first written sources on the conflict being authored by Europeans.

Trousers

Trousers (pants in North America) are an item of clothing worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth extending across both legs as in robes, skirts, and dresses).

In the UK the word "pants" generally means underwear and not trousers.Shorts are similar to trousers, but with legs that come down only to around the area of the knee, higher or lower depending on the style of the garment. To distinguish them from shorts, trousers may be called "long trousers" in certain contexts such as school uniform, where tailored shorts may be called "short trousers", especially in the UK.

In most of the Western world, trousers have been worn since ancient times and throughout the Medieval period, becoming the most common form of lower-body clothing for adult males in the modern world, although shorts are also widely worn, and kilts and other garments may be worn in various regions and cultures. Breeches were worn instead of trousers in early modern Europe by some men in higher classes of society. Since the mid-20th century, trousers have increasingly been worn by women as well. Jeans, made of denim, are a form of trousers for casual wear, now widely worn all over the world by both sexes. Shorts are often preferred in hot weather or for some sports and also often by children and teenagers. Trousers are worn on the hips or waist and may be held up by their own fastenings, a belt or suspenders (braces). Leggings are form-fitting trousers, of a clingy material, often knitted cotton and spandex (elastane).

Native American music

Native American music is the music that is used, created or performed by Native Americans in the United States and First Nations people of Canada, specifically traditional tribal music. In addition to the traditional music of the Native American groups, there now exist pan-tribal and inter-tribal genres as well as distinct Native American subgenres of popular music including: rock, blues, hip hop, classical, film music, and reggae, as well as unique popular styles like waila ("chicken scratch").

Characteristics

Singing and percussion are the most important aspects of traditional Native American music. Vocalization takes many forms, ranging from solo and choral song to responsorial, unison and multipart singing. Percussion, especially drums and rattles, are common accompaniment to keep the rhythm steady for the singers, who generally use their native language or non-lexical vocables (nonsense syllables). Traditional music usually begins with slow and steady beats that grow gradually faster and more emphatic, while various flourishes like drum and rattle tremolos, shouts and accented patterns add variety and signal changes in performance for singers and dancers.