Choctaw language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Choctaw Chahta |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | United States | |
| Region: | Southeastern Oklahoma and east central Mississippi, and into Louisiana and Tennessee | |
| Total speakers: | About 9,200 | |
| Language family: | Muskogean Western Muskogean Choctaw |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | cho | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | cho | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Choctaw language, traditionally spoken by the Native American Choctaw people of the southeastern United States, is a member of the Muskogean family. The Choctaw language was well known as a lingua franca of the frontiersmen of the early 19th Century, including eventual American Presidents Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison. The language is very closely related to Chickasaw and some linguists consider the two dialects of a single language, although recent reports indicate that speakers of Choctaw find Chickasaw to be unintelligible.
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[edit] Dialects
There are three dialects of Choctaw (Mithun 1999):
- "Native" Choctaw on the Choctaw Nation in southeastern Oklahoma
- Mississippi Choctaw of Oklahoma on Chickasaw Nation of south central Oklahoma (near Durwood)
- Choctaw of Mississippi near Philadelphia
Other speakers live near Tallahassee, Florida and with the Koasati in Louisiana.
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p, b | t | k | ||
| Affricate | ʧ | ||||
| Fricative | f | s | ʃ | h | |
| Nasal | m | n | |||
| Lateral | l | ||||
| Lateral fricative | ɬ | ||||
| Semivowel | w | j |
Some orthographies use <š> and <č> for /ʃ/ and /ʧ/; others use the digraphs <sh> and <ch>. /j/ is spelled <y>, and most modern orthographies use <lh> to represent the lateral fricative.
[edit] Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i, iː, ĩː | ||
| Close-mid | o, oː, õː | ||
| Open | a, aː, ãː |
In closed syllables, [ɪ], [ʊ], and [ə] occur as allophonic variants of /i/, /o/, and /a/. In the orthography, nasalized vowels are usually indicated by underlining the vowel (e.g., <o> represents /õː/), and the allophonic [ʊ] is often written <u>. Some orthographies use <v> and <u> to represent the lax allophones of short /a/ and /o/--that is, [ə] and [ʊ]. These orthographies also use <e> to represent some cases of /iː/, and <i> for others, and also use <a>, <i>, and <o> to represent both the long and short phonemes of /a/, /i/, and /o/.
[edit] Grammar
[edit] Examples
Some common Choctaw phrases:
- Choctaw: Chahta
- hello: halito
- thank you: yokoke
- what is your name?: Chi hohchifo nanta?
- my name is... sa hohchifo ut...
- yes: a
- no: keyu
- I don't understand: Ak akostinincho
- Do you speak Choctaw?: Chahta imanumpa ish anumpola hinla ho?
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Broadwell, George Aaron. (2006). A Choctaw reference grammar. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
- Broadwell, George Aaron. (1991). Speaker and self in Choctaw. International Journal of American Linguistics, 57, 411-425.
- Byington, Cyrus. (1915). A dictionary of the Choctaw language. J. R. Swanton & H. S. Halbert (Eds.). Bureau of American Ethnology bulletin 46. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. (Reprinted 1973 & 1978).
- Downing, Todd. (1974). Chahta anompa: An introduction to the Choctaw language (3rd ed.). Durant, OK: Choctaw Bilingual Education Program, Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
- Heath, Jeffrey. (1977). Choctaw cases. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 3, 204-213.
- Heath, Jeffrey. (1980). Choctaw suppletive verbs and derivational morphology.
- Howard, Gregg; Eby, Richard; Jones, Charles G. (19991). Introduction to Choctaw: A primer for learning to speak, read and write the Choctaw language. Fayetteville, AR: VIP Pub.
- Jacob, Betty. (1980). Choctaw and Chickasaw. Abstract of paper delivered at the 1978 Muskogean conference. International Journal of American Linguistics, 46, 43.
- Jacob, Betty; Nicklas, Thurston Dale; & Spencer, Betty Lou. (1977). Introduction to Choctaw. Durant, OK: Choctaw Bilingual Education Program, Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Munro, Pamela. (1987). Some morphological differences between Chickasaw and Choctaw. In P. Munro (Ed.), Muskogean linguistics (pp. 119-133). Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles, Department of Linguistics.
- Munro, Pamela (Ed.). (1987). Muskogean linguistics. UCLA occasional papers in linguistics (No. 6). Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles, Department of Linguistics.
- Nicklas, Thurston Dale. (1974). The elements of Choctaw. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor).
- Nicklas, Thurston Dale. (1975). Choctaw morphophonemics. In J. Crawford (Ed.), Studies in southeastern Indian languages (pp. 237-249). Athens: University of Georgia.
- Nicklas, Thurston Dale. (1979). Reference grammar of the Choctaw language. Durant, OK: Choctaw Bilingual Education Program, Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
- Pulte, William. (1975). The position of Chickasaw in Western Muskogean. In J. Crawford (Ed.), Studies in southeastern Indian languages (pp. 251-263). Athens: University of Georgia.
- Ulrich, Charles H. (1986). Choctaw morphophonology. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles).
- Ulrich, Charles H. (1987). Choctaw g-grades and y-grades. In P. Munro (Ed.), Muskogean linguistics (pp. 171-178). Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles, Department of Linguistics.
- Ulrich, Charles H. (1987). Choctaw verb grades and the nature of syllabification. In A. Bosch, B. Need, & E. Schiller (Eds.), Papers from the 23rd annual regional meeting. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
- Ulrich, Charles H. (1988). The morphophonology of Choctaw verb roots and valence suffixes. In W. Shipley (Ed.), In honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas Festival conference on Native American linguistics (pp. 805-818). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN
