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Speaking Tsalagi: Preserving The Cherokee Language

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Fresh out of the University of Texas at Austin with a Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics, Bill Pulte found a job that would shape his academic career for the next 38 years. He became project director for the Cherokee Bilingual Education Program, in Tahlequah Oklahoma, headquarters of the 50,000-member Cherokee Nation. It was one of the first projects funded by the U.S. Bilingual Education Act of 1971. His two years in Tahlequah launched a career dedicated to preserving the Cherokee language and developing the best way to teach all children a second language. “Forty years ago, most of the Cherokee children in the Tahlequah schools spoke Cherokee better than English,” says Pulte, associate professor of education, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. “However, the classes were conducted only in English. A dictionary was one of the first things that teachers needed to create a bilingual program.”

With his co-author, Cherokee tribal linguist Durbin Feeling, Pulte edited The Cherokee-English Dictionary and the Outline of Cherokee Grammar (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, 1975). Research published in the January 1982 issue of the Journal of American Indian Language found that over a five-year period, the children who participated in the Cherokee Bilingual Education Program scored significantly higher in reading and mathematics than children in the Cherokee Nation who were taught only in English. “My own thinking about how children learn their first and second languages crystallized after my years in Tahlequah,” Pulte says. “It is important for children to receive school instruction in their native language. Research shows it takes five to six years for a student to master a new language.” Pulte joined the Department of Anthropology in Dedman College in 1973 as a linguistic anthropologist and in 1975 became head of SMU’s bilingual education program focusing on English and Spanish. In 1977 he received the first of what has eventually totaled $8 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education to certify teachers in bilingual education and to provide advanced training to certified teachers.

Since then, Pulte has directed bilingual education training at SMU for more than 800 teachers. The Texas Association for Bilingual Education presented him the Higher Education Honoree Award in 2005 for his efforts in the field. Today Pulte continues his work with the Cherokee language. He and Feeling are transcribing and translating 25 Cherokee narratives including diaries, legal documents and legends for a new book. Their dictionary and grammar guide are still in use as the Cherokee language faces a new challenge. A Cherokee Nation survey in 2002 found no fluent Cherokee speakers under the age of 40 and predicted the language could become extinct in one to two generations. Pulte and Feeling’s work has become the core resource for the new Cherokee language revitalization project. “In the opinion of some linguists, 90 percent of the world’s 2,000 languages will die out by 2100 because of urbanization and globalization,” Pulte says. “It’s important to learn what these languages have in common because that tells us something about the mind. The study of languages is very much linked to neuroscience and cognitive psychology.”

For more information: smu.edu/education/teachereducation/ faculty/pultebill.asp