How did Europeans change the Native Americans' language?

Answer 1

There were, and are, so many cultures and languages in North America and the history of interaction covers 500 years so this is a difficult question. In general, in the long run, contact with Americans meant the loss of native languages. At times this was part of a official government policy such as the "kill the Indian, save the man" idea and the Indian boarding schools. It was even forbidden to speak native languages in places.

At other, mainly earlier times, it was more an effect of the larger numbers of Europeans and the relative lack of immunity to European diseases. Also, most American cultural attitudes meant few troubled to learn the complicated sophisticated languages that they contacted.

In the Pacific Northwest, small pox killed 40-70% of many villages in the 1860-80s. Those that remained were traumatized and lost many aspects of their culture. Many times groups moved together that only had English as a common tongue. Other times, the American government forced unrelated people together and English became the common language. Trading with Americans became more and more important in many places and English was the common language for that.

In some places native based lingua franca developed that became the native language for even non-natives. At one time this was the case in Washington, Oregon and B.C. This was also true in the Canadian Metis areas.

Some languages borrow heavily from languages they contact, others do not. English is one that borrows. Navajo is one that borrows very little and happens to be the native language remaining with the most speakers. It is hard to say why but it is hard to borrow word and fit them into Navajo grammar. There are only a handful of borrowed words in Navajo. In other places, like California, huge population losses having to do with the Spanish policies meant that many native languages had mostly been replaced by Spanish by the time the Americans arrived.

Even today, in border towns to Native lands there is a great deal of hostility to native languages being spoken in public. This is common in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, and South and North Dakota. The "English only" movement is popular in Arizona, which is one of the States with the largest number of today's native speakers. So the attitudes against native languages persist to this day.