Blair Arnold Rudes (May 18, 1951 – March 16, 2008) was an American linguist and professor at the

University of North Carolina at Charlotte The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte or simply Charlotte) is a public research university in Charlotte, North Carolina. UNC Charlotte offers 24 doctoral, 66 master's, and 79 bachelor's degree programs through nine coll ...

best known for his expertise in

Native American languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...

. He was hired in 2004 to reconstruct the long extinct

Powhatan language Powhatan or Virginia Algonquian was an Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian languages. It was formerly spoken by the Powhatan people of tidewater Virginia. Following 1970s linguistic research by Frank Thomas Siebert, Jr., some of the ...

for use in the film, The New World.''A Dead Indian Language Is Brought Back to Life''
Washington Post, David A. Fahrenthold, December 12, 2006.

Early life and education

Blair A. Rudes was born on May 18, 1951, in

Gloversville, New York Gloversville is a city in the Mohawk Valley region of Upstate New York, and the most populous city in Fulton County. Gloversville was once the hub of the United States' glovemaking industry, with over two hundred manufacturers in Gloversville ...

. He said his mother was of Irish descent and said his great-grandmother was

Abenaki The Abenaki ( Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was pre ...

. He studied at Piseco Elementary School and Wells Central High School as a child, before going on to the

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

, where he obtained a doctorate in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

in 1976.

Career

Rudes became an assistant professor of English at the

University of North Carolina, Charlotte The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte or simply Charlotte) is a public research university in Charlotte, North Carolina. UNC Charlotte offers 24 doctoral, 66 master's, and 79 bachelor's degree programs through nine col ...

in 1999 and was promoted to an associate professor in 2005. As a scholar, he is most well known for writing the Tuscarora Dictionary, which the University of Toronto Press published in 1999. He also published over twenty articles in scholarly journals and helped edit several books. In 2004 Rudes was hired to reconstruct the

for use in

Terrence Malick Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American filmmaker. His films include ''Days of Heaven'' (1978), '' The Thin Red Line'' (1998), for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay ...

's 2005 film '' The New World''. He utilized Colonial-era word lists, along with scholarly work, and filled in linguistic blanks by using better attested

Eastern Algonquian languages The Eastern Algonquian languages constitute a subgroup of the Algonquian languages. Prior to European contact, Eastern Algonquian consisted of at least 17 languages, whose speakers collectively occupied the Atlantic coast of North America and ad ...

. Initially, one scene consisting of three pages of dialogue took him one month to reconstruct. Pleased with the results, Malick wanted to film fifty additional scenes in Powhatan. Rudes spent two weeks in a hotel room translating dialogue and then coached actors of how to properly pronounce their lines. His contributions to the film attracted widescale publicity, including a feature story in the Science Section of the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

. At Rude's request, the movie studio made his work available to Algonquian tribes located in

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

so that members could relearn their ancestral language. His work additionally helped dispel a longstanding belief that the term "Chesapeake" meant "Great Shellfish Bay" in Powhatan. Rudes discovered that in actuality, it probably means "Great Water". Impressed by Rudes' work on The New World, director

Carter Smith Carter Smith (born September 6, 1971) is an American filmmaker and fashion photographer. He is best known for directing the films '' The Ruins'' (2008) and '' Jamie Marks Is Dead'' (2014). Life and career A native of Bowdoinham, Maine, Smith move ...

hired him as the Mayan Dialogue Coach for The Ruins.

Personal life

Dr. Rudes was a polyglot, among the languages he could speak were

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Irish Gaelic Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was th ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

, Russian, and

Tuscarora Tuscarora may refer to the following: First nations and Native American people and culture * Tuscarora people **'' Federal Power Commission v. Tuscarora Indian Nation'' (1960) * Tuscarora language, an Iroquoian language of the Tuscarora people * ...

. He identified as a gay man and was predeceased by his companion, Philip Hunt. He had two dogs, Heidi and Ben.

Death

Rudes died of a heart attack on March 16, 2008, after working out at a gym in

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most popu ...

.Memorial: Remembering Our Friend, Blair A. Rudes – Linguistics Advisor to CCIC
28 March 2008, accessed November 21, 2013. At the time of his death, he was working on a three volume work titled "The Catawba Language" for the University of South Carolina Press.

Awards

Dr. Rudes was the recipient of several honors. In 2006 he was recognized by the Tuscorora Indian Nation for his contributions to preserving their language and in 2007, the South Carolina General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the work he had done for the South Carolina Commission for Minority Affairs. On April 5, 2008, he was posthumously awarded the University at Buffalo’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Selected bibliography

*''Tuscarora-English / English-Tuscarora Dictionary'', 1999 *''Endangered Languages and Literacy: Proceedings of the Fourth FEl Conference'', Nicholas Ostler (editor), Blair A. Rudes (editor), Foundation for Endangered Languages, 2000