An Alligator By Any Other Name

Say the word "alligator". Which syllable gets the most emphasis, also known as stress in the grammar world? Yup, the first one.

AL-i-ga-tor.

This is called "primary stress". If you’re wondering, what does grammar have to do with the Okefenokee Swamp, well...

Okefenokee Swamp was once home to members of a huge, diverse society of indigenous people- the Timucua (a word which they did not call themselves, but that's for another day). During the time of the mission system in Spanish Florida, which subjected these Native people of Florida and South Georgia to Franciscan conversion, a friar named Francisco Pareja lived amongst them. By the 1700s, every Timucuan village had a friar that lived or visited there.

Pareja meticulously studied, learned, and documented the language of the Native people he lived with. Because of his writings, Timucuan is now one of the most extensively documented extinct languages in the world. While the Timucuan people and their culture no longer exist due to European diseases, their language survives in the writings of Pareja (and a few others).

According to Native American linguist Julian Granberry, one of the very, very few experts on the Timucuan language: "Pareja specifically states that [Timucuan] words of one, two, or three syllables take primary stress."

The Timucuan word for the creature we know as an alligator was "itori" (interestingly, their word for grandfather was also "itori"). What we know of Pareja's documentation of their grammar indicates that itori should be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable- "EE-tor-ee".

So, the next time you visit the Swamp, think of the Timucua people when you spot an itori!

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Learn more about the indigenous people who once called this amazing wetland home on a Naruralist-guided tour with us- email okeexpeditions@gmail.com or visit okefenokee-satilla.com to book!