A Dead Indian Language Is Brought Back to Life

Linguists are interested in the language's tendency, much like modern German, to mash together so many prefixes and suffixes that an entire phrase or sentence is summed up in a single word. " Rappahannock," for instance, contains elements that mean "back," "current of water" and "place." "Place where the water comes back" -- it means a river moved by the tides.

"What are the possibilities for how humans can organize their thoughts and present them?" said Ives Goddard, an Indian language expert at the Smithsonian Institution. "Here's another blueprint, another bag of tricks."

For the descendants of Algonquian speakers, who account for seven of Virginia's eight state-recognized Indian tribes, the interest is more than academic. At Rudes's request, the movie studio made his work from the movie available to them.

" Win-KAW-poe nee-TAWP," Chief Robert "Two Eagles" Green of the Patawomeck tribe -- a group in Stafford County without state recognition-- can now say in his talks to school groups. Hello, my friend."It kind of awakens them a little bit to the fact that everybody in America didn't always speak English," he said.

Some tribes have started teaching children pieces of the language; others say they want adult classes.

"I would like to see it as a restored language . . . to be spoken in its fullness," said Richardson, the chief of the Rappahannock tribe. "I don't want it partially restored. I want it fully restored."

A glimpse of the future might have come this summer in Great Britain, at a powwow the tribes held in the town where Pocahontas is buried. This was what Custalow had been preparing for: In the end, he didn't trust himself to memorize the strange syllables, so he brought along a cheat sheet.

Custalow said he did it flawlessly, ending the prayer with the Algonquian word "NAH-daych." The crowd responded with the same word in English: Amen.

Visitors tohttp://www.washingtonpost.com/metrocan click on some of the words in this story and hear Prof. Blair Rudes pronounce the modern word, then its Virginia Algonquian equivalent.