Catawba language

Catawba is one of two Eastern Siouan languages of the eastern US, which together with the Western Siouan languages formed the Siouan language family. The last native, fluent speaker of Catawba was Samuel Taylor Blue, who died in 1959. The Catawba people are now working to revitalize and preserve the Catawba language.

Phonology

Consonants

// rarely occurs.
occurs as an allophone of //.

Vowels

Short vowel sounds // can be heard as lax, ranging to .
// can range to, and a short // can range to a central vowel or a back vowel sound .

Orthography

A Catawba alphabet was created by the Catawba Language Project for the Catawba language, as part of a revitalization effort for the language and the creation of an app for it.

A a	α	Ą ą	B b	Č č
	~
D d	E e	Ɛ ɛ	Ę ę	G g

H h	ʰ	ʔ	I i	Ii ii

Į į	K k	M m	N n	P p

R r	S s	T t	U u	Uu uu
	~
Ų ų	W w	Y y	Á á	ά
				~
Ą́ ą́	É é	Ɛ́ έ	Ę ę	Í í

Íí íí	Į́ į́	Ú ú	Úú úú	Ų́ ų́

The aspirated is used in the word: hawuʰ 'thank you'.
The ⟨ʔ⟩ is written in different ways like ⟨ɂ⟩ and ⟨ˀ⟩ in some texts.
The ⟨o⟩ and ⟨ǫ⟩ is some time occurs in words like example, mǫ meaning 'ask', wǫ meaning 'call', mǫhee meaning 'ice', and sota meaning Santee Tribe.

Errata

Red Thunder Cloud, an impostor, born Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West, claimed to be Catawba and the last speaker of the Catawba language. He was promoted by anthropologist Frank Speck, who introduced West to the Catawba community. The Catawba told Speck that West was not Catawba, but Speck ignored them and continued to promote West and include him in his work, even recommending him as an expert to other anthropologists. At his death in 1996 it was revealed that West was neither Catawba nor even Native American, but had learned what he knew of the language from books, and from listening to the last known native speaker, Samuel Taylor Blue and his half-sister, Sally Gordon, when Speck brought him to the Catawba reservation. This had apparently been enough to fool the non-Native ethnologists who wrote about him.