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A Susquehannock, from John Smith's
Generall Historie (1624).

The American Language Reprint Series

Dedicated to the preservation of early Native American linguistic records

"This series provides easy access to valuable documentation for linguists working on Algonquian, Iroquoian, and (Mississippi Valley) Siouan languages. ... A laudable and welcome initiative by a seemingly inexhaustible and enthusiastic compiler."   —The International Journal of American Linguistics

Main Features

  • Introduction to the ALR series

  • Complete Catalog of the ALR series

  • ALR Supplement series

  • The Complete ALR series is now available on CD-Rom!
    "...Highly recommended for libraries and linguists, as well as for individuals interested in early American Indian vocabularies and regional history. Summing up: Highly recommended. Public libraries where interest exists; academic libraries; graduate students and above."   —CHOICE

    "Recommended for academic, public, and high school libraries, particularly those that are developing collections in Native American studies, linguistics, or North American history."    —Library Journal

  • The Interactive ALR: A Searchable Database
  • "From the time of first European contact to the emergence of modern, scientific linguistics at the end of the nineteenth century, the native languages of North America were described by numerous observers with a variety of backgrounds and interests. These early descriptions, sometimes unfairly denigrated as merely prescientific, preserve important information on many languages and dialects. A number of them show deep insights into the workings of the languages and lay the foundation for later studies."
    —Ives Goddard, The Description of the Native Languages of North America Before Boas.

    The American Language Reprint (ALR) series aims to compile the various word-lists, vocabularies and phrase books which were collected in the early years of North American settlement. The series begins with the languages and dialects of the Eastern Woodlands, with a primary emphasis on the Eastern Algonquian and Iroquoian families. We hope to progressively extend the geographical scope of the project to form a comprehensive linguistic record of native North America prior to the advent of modern linguistics.

    Each ALR volume takes an original word-list and alphabetizes the words in two sections, from the native language to English and vice-versa. The original orthographies are preserved exactly as they occur, complete with all diacritics and special characters used by the original authors. Some of these vocabularies have been edited and annotated by some of the most prominent linguists of the last two centuries: Daniel Brinton, J. Dyneley Prince, and others.

    We have also designed a utility to make this linguistic database more accessible to scholarly analysis. The Interactive ALR Searchable Database allows full web searching of all the data compiled in the series. Search for native equivalents to English words, and view their geographical and historical distributions.


    Supplemental Information

  • American Languages in New France The first volume in our Annals of Colonial North America series

  • Table of Numerals from early Native American Vocabularies

  • Map of the Atlantic coastal Languages (gif, 17k)

  • Map of The Indian Tribes of North America (Eastern portion) (jpeg, 140k) From Albert Gallatin's "A synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America", 1836.


  • Web Links of Interest

  • The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas:SSILA

  • Ethnologue Language Family Index: Algic

  • Ethnologue Language Family Index: Iroquoian

  • Native American Languages

  • Delaware (Lenape) Tribe of Indians: Common Words and Phrases in Lenape

  • Massinahigan Series: Brief Accounts of Early Native America

  • Colonial & Early Frontier Bookshop

    Last Modified: 10/23/04

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