| Also Known As: Creek,Mvskoke
Description:
The Creek language, also known as Muskogee or Muscogee (Mvskoke in Creek), is a Muskogean language spoken by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, Kialegee Tribal Town, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and other Muscogeean peoples.
The phonology of Creek consists of thirteen consonants and four vowel qualities, which distinguish length and nasalization:
The affricate here written /tʃ/ varies in its place of articulation between alveolar [ts] and palatal [tʃ]. The obstruent consonants /p t k tʃ s/ are voiced between sonorants, to [b d ɡ dʒ z].
In addition, there are three diphthongs: /eɪ/, /oɪ/, and /aʊ/ (generally realized as [əɪ oɪ əʊ]). Vowels can be nasalized (cf. the distinction between acces and ącces below); nevertheless Johnson & Martin (2001) do not list nasalized vowels as distinctive. The short vowels /i o a/ are subject to centralization in closed syllables, to approximately [ɪ ɔ ə].
There are three phonemic tones in Creek, which are generally unmarked, except in the linguistic orthography: high (marked in the linguistic orthography with an acute accent: á, etc.), low (unmarked: a, etc.), and falling (marked with a..... full article at Wikipedia |
