This artistic research gives me a new opportunity to bring the Wendat language to life in my daily life, and I am very happy about it. What needs to be understood about this language is that, as mentioned in my first article, it is dormant. There have been no speakers for over 100 years, so we have several gaps in our linguistic puzzle. So, I understand well that if I write a text in French that I would like to have translated into Wendat word for word, it will not be possible or it might be possible in 50 years. Extensive research has been conducted for over 30 years to gather Wendat words, phrases, and expressions, but of course, we do not yet possess all the knowledge. The path is long to reconstruct a grammar, a dictionary.
To introduce the Wendat language into the story in creation, I chose to proceed in a different way. To date, I have created a story with a clear sense of where it begins, progresses, and ends. The characters also have their own personalities, experience actions, and states that move the story forward, which means that the foundation, the skeleton, is well established. Thinking about these elements, I search aimlessly or with keywords and get lost in the linguistic dictionary, particularly in the thesis of the Wendat linguist Megan Elizabeth Lukaniec: The elaboration of verbal structure: Wendat (Huron) verb morphology. And there, by chance, I make discoveries. Expressions, phrases, words reveal themselves, call out to me, and I associate them with a character or a moment in the story. These discoveries can become any kind of dialog or a monolog. In summary, it is the language and the linguistic material I have access to that guide me in creation as a constraint. The story, which has its guiding line, gradually finds its place in nuances and colors thanks to the Wendat language. All of this inspires me immensely!
I am sharing with you below some Wendat linguistic discoveries that fit well with the universe I am creating.
eskatieronhkwaha’
« les forces me reviendront »
‘my strength will come back to me’
iyias
« je chante quand l’envie m’en prend »
‘I sing when the mood strikes me’
häa’tou’tenh
« c’est la son naturel…il est naturellement tel »
‘this is his natural type, he is naturally like this’
a’kwatronhiakhahska’
« le ciel s’est entrouvert »
‘the sky opened up’
hönda’tarakhwi’ndih
« il est saoul de pain »
‘he is satiated, full from bread’
Onsäayionnhont de onywawenda’
« Nous redonnons vie à notre voix »
