Choctaw language

The Choctaw language, traditionally spoken by the Native American Choctaw tribe of the southeastern United States, is a member of the Muskogean family. It 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.

Phonology

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

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>.

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?

External Links

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
Choctaw - Something is wrong with this PDF file, so the link given here is to Google's HTML cache of the PDF.
Halito Okla Homma!

Bibliography

• 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.
• 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 0-8992-5281-8.
• Ulrich, Charles H. (1994). A unified account of Choctaw intensives. Phonology, 2, 325-370.
• Watkins, Ben. (1892). Complete Choctaw definer: English with Choctaw definition. Van Buren, AR: J. W. Baldwin. (Reprinted 1972).
• Wright, Allen. (1880). Chahta leksikon: A Choctaw in English definition for the Choctaw academies and schools. St. Louis: Presbyterian Publishing Co.