| Description:
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. Although Chickasaw is sometimes listed as a dialect of Choctaw, more extensive documentation of Chickasaw has shown that Choctaw and Chickasaw are best treated as separate but closely related languages (Munro 1984).
The written Choctaw language is based upon English version of the Roman alphabet and was developed in conjunction with the civilization program of the United States in the early 1800s. Although there are other variation of the Choctaw alphabet, the three most commonly seen are the Byington (Original ), Byington/Swanton (Linguistic), and Modern (Mississippi Choctaw).
Many publications by linguists about the Choctaw language use a slight variant of the "modern" orthography listed here, where long vowels are written as doubled. In the "Linguistic" version, the acute accent shows the position of the pitch accent, rather than the length of the..... full article at Wikipedia |
