Pawnee language

Last updated
Pawnee
Native to United States
RegionNorth-central Oklahoma
Ethnicity2,500 Pawnee (2007)
Native speakers
< 10 (2007) [1]
Caddoan
Language codes
ISO 639-3 paw
Glottolog pawn1254
ELP Pawnee
Linguasphere 64-BAB-b
Pawnee lang.png
Pre-contact distribution of Pawnee
Lang Status 20-CR.svg
Pawnee is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language traditionally spoken by Pawnee Native Americans, currently inhabiting north-central Oklahoma. Historically, the Pawnee lived along the Platte River in what is now Nebraska.

Contents

Dialects

Two important dialect divisions are evident in Pawnee: South Band and Skiri. The distinction between the two dialects rests on differences in their respective phonetic inventory and lexicon. The Skiri dialect became extinct in 2001 with the death of Lula Nora Pratt. [2]

Status

As of 2007, there are fewer than 10 native speakers, all elderly. The Pawnee Nation is developing teaching materials for the local high school and for adult language classes. There are also extensive documentary materials in the language archived at the American Indian Studies Research Institute. [3] The Pawnee language can be heard spoken in the 2015 movie The Revenant . [4] In 2019 and 2020, the Pawnee Nation posted online videos teaching the Pawnee language. [5]

Phonology

The following describes the South Band dialect.

Consonants

Pawnee has eight consonant phonemes, and according to one analysis of medial- and final-position glottal stops, one may posit a ninth consonant phoneme.

 BilabialAlveolarVelarGlottal
Stopptk(ʔ)
Affricate ts  
Rhotic r  
Fricative s h
Approximant  w 

Vowels

Pawnee has four short vowel phonemes and four long counterparts (also phonemic).

 FrontBack
 High i/iːu/uː
 Mid-low e/eːa/aː

Morphology

Pawnee is an ergative-absolutive polysynthetic language.

Alphabet

The Pawnee alphabet has nine consonants and eight vowels. The letters are relatively similar in pronunciation to their English counterparts.

Consonants

SpellingSound (IPA)English equivalents
pppoke, cup
tttop, cat
kkcool, stuck
cʃ ~ tsshell, push ~ pants
sssilly, face
hhheart, ahead
rrcar, ferry
wwwacky, away
ʔThe "-" in uh-oh

Vowels

SpellingSound (IPA)English equivalents
iɪsit
iiifeed
eɛred
eepaid
aʌnut
aaɑfather
uʊbook
uuurude

Other alphabets

Here are other alphabets that are used sometimes in Pawnee texts.

Pawnee Alphabet #1
aâcčeêhiîkprstuûw
Pawnee Alphabet #2
aaacheeehiiikoooprsttsuuuw

Notes

  1. Victor Golla, "North America.” In Moseley & Asher, Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages
  2. Douglas Parks and Lula Nora Pratt (2008) A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee
  3. "Pawnee".
  4. Nolan, Bethany. "IU linguists provide Arikara and Pawnee dialogue for Oscar-nominated film 'The Revenant'". Inside IU Bloomington. Retrieved 2019-07-24.
  5. YouTube user "Pawnee Nation". "Pawnee Language Classes - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 10 May 2023.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allophone</span> Phone used to pronounce a single phoneme

In phonology, an allophone is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Egyptian language</span> Extinct language family spoken in ancient Egypt

The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian, is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world following the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century.

Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in some southern High-German dialects, as well as in a few African and Native American languages. Uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glottal stop</span> Sound made by stopping airflow in the glottis

The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wyandot language</span> Iroquoian language

Wyandot is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known as Wyandot or Wyandotte, descended from the Tionontati. It is considered a sister to the Wendat language, spoken by descendants of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy. It was last spoken, before its revival, by members located primarily in Oklahoma, United States, and Quebec, Canada. Linguists have traditionally considered Wyandot as a dialect or modern form of Wendat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tlingit language</span> Na-Dene language of southeast Alaska and western Canada

The Tlingit language is spoken by the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada and is a branch of the Na-Dene language family. Extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve the Tlingit language and culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caddoan languages</span> Family of Native American languages

The Caddoan languages are a family of languages native to the Great Plains spoken by tribal groups of the central United States, from present-day North Dakota south to Oklahoma. All Caddoan languages are critically endangered, as the number of speakers has declined markedly due to colonial legacy, lack of support, and other factors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caddo language</span> Endangered language of the southern US

Caddo is a Native American language, the traditional language of the Caddo Nation. It is critically endangered, with no exclusively Caddo-speaking community and as of 2023 only two speakers who had acquired the language as children outside school instruction, down from 25 speakers in 1997. Caddo has several mutually intelligible dialects. The most commonly used dialects are Hasinai and Hainai; others include Kadohadacho, Natchitoches and Yatasi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lebanese Arabic</span> Dialect of North Levantine Arabic

Lebanese Arabic, or simply Lebanese, is a variety of North Levantine Arabic, indigenous to and primarily spoken in Lebanon, with significant linguistic influences borrowed from other Middle Eastern and European languages and is in some ways unique from other varieties of Arabic. Due to multilingualism and pervasive diglossia among Lebanese people, it is not uncommon for Lebanese people to code-switch between or mix Lebanese Arabic, French, and English in their daily speech. It is also spoken among the Lebanese diaspora.

Potawatomi is a Central Algonquian language. It was historically spoken by the Pottawatomi people who lived around the Great Lakes in what are now Michigan and Wisconsin in the United States, and in southern Ontario in Canada. Federally recognized tribes in Michigan and Oklahoma are working to revive the language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mongsen Ao language</span> Sino-Tibetan language spoken in India

Mongsen Ao is a member of the Ao languages, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, predominantly spoken in central Mokokchung district of Nagaland, northeast India. Its speakers see the language as one of two varieties of a greater "Ao language," along with the prestige variety Chungli Ao.

The Iu Mien language is the language spoken by the Iu Mien people in China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and, more recently, the United States in diaspora. Like other Mien languages, it is tonal and monosyllabic.

The phonology of the Ojibwe language varies from dialect to dialect, but all varieties share common features. Ojibwe is an indigenous language of the Algonquian language family spoken in Canada and the United States in the areas surrounding the Great Lakes, and westward onto the northern plains in both countries, as well as in northeastern Ontario and northwestern Quebec. The article on Ojibwe dialects discusses linguistic variation in more detail, and contains links to separate articles on each dialect. There is no standard language and no dialect that is accepted as representing a standard. Ojibwe words in this article are written in the practical orthography commonly known as the Double vowel system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saanich dialect</span> Language of the Saanich people of North America

Saanich is the language of the First Nations Saanich people in the Pacific Northwest region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan language in the Northern Straits dialect continuum, the varieties of which are closely related to the Klallam language.

Jarai is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Jarai people of Vietnam and Cambodia. The speakers of Jarai number approximately 530,000, not including other possible Jarai communities in countries other than Vietnam and Cambodia such as United States of America. They are the largest of the upland ethnic groups of Vietnam's Central Highlands known as Degar or Montagnards, and 25 per cent of the population in the Cambodian province of Ratanakiri.

The phonological system of the Hawaiian language is based on documentation from those who developed the Hawaiian alphabet during the 1820s as well as scholarly research conducted by lexicographers and linguists from 1949 to present.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arikara language</span> Arikara Native American language

Arikara is a Caddoan language spoken by the Arikara Native Americans who reside primarily at Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Arikara is close to the Pawnee language, but they are not mutually intelligible.

The phonology of the Zuni language as spoken in the southwestern United States is described here. Phonology is a branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds.

The Kaingang language is a Southern Jê language spoken by the Kaingang people of southern Brazil. The Kaingang nation has about 30,000 people, and about 60–65% speak the language. Most also speak Portuguese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patwin language</span> Endangered indigenous language of northern California

Patwin (Patween) is a critically endangered Wintuan language of Northern California. As of 2021, there was one documented first language speaker of Patwin. As of 2010, Patwin language classes were taught at the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation tribal school.

References