Muscogee language
The Muscogee language, previously referred to by its exonym, Creek, is spoken by Muscogee and Seminole people, primarily in the US states of Oklahoma and Florida.
Muscogee was historically spoken by various constituent groups of the Muscogee confederacy in what are now Alabama and Georgia. In the early 18th century some Muscogee speakers began to join speakers of Hitchiti-Mikasuki in Florida. Combining with other ethnicities there, they emerged as the Seminole. During the 1830s, the US government forced most Muscogee and Seminole to relocate west of the Mississippi River, with most forced into Indian Territory.
Muscogee is today spoken by fewer than 400 people, most of whom live in Oklahoma and are members of the Muscogee Nation and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Some speakers of Muscogee are also members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The variety of Muscogee spoken by Seminoles in Oklahoma is sometimes referred to as "Seminole". Among Seminoles in Florida, Hitchiti-Mikasuki is the dominant language, however.
Muscogee belongs to a family of languages known as Muskogean. Muscogee is related to, but not mutually intelligible with, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama, Koasati, Apalachee, and Hitchiti-Mikasuki.
Dialects
The three main dialects of Muscogee are Muscogee proper, Oklahoma Seminole Muscogee, and Florida Seminole Muscogee. The most distinct dialect of the language is said to be that of the Florida Seminole, which is described as "rapid", "staccato" and "dental", with more loan words from Spanish and Mikasuki as opposed to English. Florida Seminole Muscogee is the most endangered variety of the Muscogee language.| Muscogee proper | Oklahoma Seminole | |
| cufonwv | esropottv | needle |
| kvpe | ’sokkoskv | soap |
Claudio Saunt, writing about the language of the later 18th century, said that there were different feminine and masculine versions, which he also calls dialects, of the Muscogee language. Males "attach distinct endings to verbs", while females "accent different syllables". These forms, mentioned in the first grammar of the Muscogee language, persisted in the Hichiti, Muscogee proper, and Koasati languages at least into the first half of the 20th century.
Current status
Muscogee is the primary heritage language of the Muscogee people. The Muscogee Nation offers free language classes and immersion camps to Muscogee children.Language programs
The College of the Muscogee Nation offers a language certificate program. Tulsa public schools, the University of Oklahoma and Glenpool Library in Tulsa and the Holdenville, Okmulgee, and Tulsa Muscogee Communities of the Muscogee Nation offer Muscogee Creek language classes. In 2013, the Sapulpa Creek Community Center graduated a class of 14 from its Muscogee language class. In 2018, 8 teachers graduated from a class put on by the Seminole nation at Seminole State College to try and reintroduce the Muscogee language to students in elementary and high school in several schools around the state.Phonology
The phoneme inventory of Muscogee consists of thirteen consonants and three vowel qualities, which distinguish length, tone and nasalization. It also makes use of the gemination of stops, fricatives and sonorants.Consonants
Plosives
There are four voiceless stops in Muscogee:. is a voiceless palatal affricate and patterns as a single consonant and so with the other voiceless stops. has an alveolar allophone before. The obstruent consonants are voiced to between sonorants and vowels but remain voiceless at the end of a syllable.Between instances of, or after at the end of a syllable, the velar is realized as the uvular or. For example:
Fricatives
There are four voiceless fricatives in Muscogee:. can be realized as either labiodental or bilabial in place of articulation. Predominantly among speakers in Florida, the articulation of is more laminal, resulting in being realized as, but for most speakers, is a voiceless apico-alveolar fricative.Like, the glottal is sometimes realized as the uvular when it is preceded by or when syllable-final:
Sonorants
The sonorants in Muscogee are two nasals, two semivowels, and the lateral, all voiced. Nasal assimilation occurs in Muscogee: becomes before.Sonorants are devoiced when followed by in the same syllable and results in a single voiceless consonant:
Geminates
All plosives and fricatives in Muscogee can be geminated. Some sonorants may also be geminated, but and are less common than other sonorant geminates, especially in roots. For the majority of speakers, except for those influenced by the Alabama or Koasati languages, the geminate does not occur.Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Muscogee are as follows:| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Close-mid | |||
| Open |
There are three short vowels and three long vowels. There are also the nasal vowels . Most occurrences of nasal vowels are the result of nasal assimilation or the nasalizing grade, but there are some forms that show contrast between oral and nasal vowels:
Short vowels
The three short vowels can be realized as the lax and centralized when a neighboring consonant is coronal or in closed syllables. However, will generally not centralize when it is followed by or in the same syllable, and will generally remain noncentral if it is word-final. Initial vowels can be deleted in Muscogee, mostly applying to the vowel. The deletion will affect the pitch of the following syllable by creating a higher-than-expected pitch on the new initial syllable. Furthermore, initial vowel deletion in the case of single-morpheme, short words such as ifa 'dog' or icó 'deer' is impossible, as the shortest a Muscogee word can be is a one-syllable word ending in a long vowel or a two-syllable word ending with a short vowel.Long vowels
There are three long vowels in Muscogee, which are slightly longer than short vowels and are never centralized.Long vowels are rarely followed by a sonorant in the same syllable. Therefore, when syllables are created in which a long vowel is followed by a sonorant, the vowel is shortened:
Diphthongs
In Muscogee, there are three diphthongs, generally realized as, phonemically may be.Nasal vowels
Both long and short vowels can be nasalized, but long nasal vowels are more common. Nasal vowels usually appear as a result of a contraction, as the result of a neighboring nasal consonant, or as the result of nasalizing grade, a grammatical ablaut, which indicates intensification through lengthening and nasalization of a vowel. Nasal vowels may also appear as part of a suffix that indicates a question.Tones
There are three phonemic tones in Muscogee; they are generally unmarked except in the linguistic orthography: high, low, and falling.Orthography
The traditional Muscogee alphabet was adopted by many interpreters and chiefs as the "National Alphabet" in 1853 and has 20 letters.Although it is based on the Latin alphabet, some sounds like c, e, i, r, and v differ from those in English. Here are the equivalent sounds using familiar English words and the IPA:
| Spelling | Sound | English equivalent |
| a | ~ | like the "a" in father |
| c | ~ | like the "ch" in such or the "ts" in cats |
| e | like the "i" in hit | |
| ē | like the "ee" in seed | |
| f | like the "f" in father | |
| h | like the "h" in hatch | |
| i | ~ : | like the "ay" in day |
| k | like the "k" in skim | |
| l | like the "l" in look | |
| m | like the "m" in moon | |
| n | like the "n" in moon | |
| o | ~ ~ | like the "o" in bone or the "oo" in book |
| p | like the "p" in spot | |
| r | a sound that does not occur in English but is often represented as "hl" or "thl" in English spellings. The sound is made by blowing air around the sides of the tongue while pronouncing English l and is identical to Welsh ll. | |
| s | like the "s" in spot | |
| t | like the "t" in stop | |
| u | ~ | like the "oo" in book or the "oa" in boat |
| v | ~ | like the "a" in about |
| w | like the "w" in wet | |
| y | like the "y" in yet |
There are also three vowel sequences whose spellings match their phonetic makeup:
| Spelling | Sound | English equivalent |
| eu | similar to the exclamation "ew!". A combination of the sounds represented by e and u | |
| ue | like the "oy" in boy | |
| vo | ~ | like the "ow" in how |
Consonants
As mentioned above, certain consonants in Muscogee, when they appear between two sonorants, become voiced. They are the consonants represented by p, t, k, c, and s:c can sound like, the "j" in justk can sound like, the "g" in goatp can sound like, the "b" in boats can sound like, the "z" in zoot can sound like, the "d" in dustVowel length
While vowel length in Muscogee is distinctive, it is somewhat inconsistently indicated in the traditional spelling. The following basic correspondences can be noted:- The short vowel v with the long vowel a
- The short vowel e with the long vowel ē
- The short vowel u with the long vowel o
Nonstandard orthography
Muscogee words carry distinctive tones and nasalization of their vowels. These features are not usually marked in the traditional spelling, but may be indicated in dictionaries and linguistic publications. The following additional markers have been used by Martin and Innes :Falling tone in a syllable is shown using a circumflex. In English, falling tone is found in phrases such as "uh-oh" or commands such as "stop!" In Muscogee, however, changing a verb such as acces to âcces alters the meaning from one of process to one of state.Nasalization of a vowel is shown with an ogonek under the vowel. Changing the verb acces to ącces adds the imperfective aspect, a sense of repeated or habitual action.Grammar
Muscogee verbs are highly synthetic, with many prefixes, suffixes, and infixes showing the person, number, and location of participants as well as the tense, aspect, and mood of the sentence. Nouns have fewer affixes, but compounding is used extensively.Word order
The basic order of elements in a sentence is subject–object–verb.Subjects and objects are commonly omitted when they are clear from context, so that Assēces is complete as a sentence meaning ’he/she/it is chasing him/her/it’.
The subject and object are noun phrases having words in the following order: — noun — —. Adverbs tend to occur either at the beginning of the sentence or immediately before the verb. Muscogee uses postpositions instead of prepositions.
Case
Noun phrases may be marked with clitics indicating the role of noun phrases in a sentence. The basic distinction is between subjects and nonsubjects. Nonsubjects include direct objects, indirect objects, times, and places. In some situations, case marking is omitted. This is especially true of sentences with only one noun where the role of the noun is obvious from the personal marking on the verb. Case marking is also omitted on fixed phrases that use a noun, e.g. "go to town" or "build a fire".Possession
Possession in Muscogee is expressed in two quite different ways, depending on the nature of the relationship.A body part or family member cannot be named in Muscogee without relating it to a possessor. A set of prefixes is used in this type of relation to show the person and number of the possessor.
| cv- | cvpuse | /ca-pósi/ | my grandmother |
| ce- | cepuse | /ci-pósi/ | your grandmother |
| e- | epuse | /i-pósi/ | his/her grandmother |
| pu- | pupuse | /po-pósi/ | our grandmother |
Nouns other than body parts and kinship terms are generally possessed with a different set of markers.
| vm | vm efv | /am-ífa/ | my dog |
| cem | cem efv | /cim-ífa/ | your dog |
| em | em efv | /im-ífa/ | his/her dog |
| pum | pum efv | /pom-ífa/ | our dog |
Person marking
Muscogee has three series of person markers on verbs. The agent person markers generally show the person and number of subjects that perform an action on purpose. Agent person markers are suffixed to the verb root.| -i | Hompis. | /homp-éy-s/ | I am eating. |
| -etsk | Hompetskes. | /homp-íck-is/ | You are eating. |
| Hompes. | /homp-ís/ | He/she/it is eating.. | |
| -ē | Hompēs. | /homp-í:-s/ | We are eating. |
| -atsk | Hompatskes. | /homp-á:ck-is/ | You all are eating. |
The patient person markers often indicate the person and number of direct objects.
| cv- | Cvhēces. | /ca-hî:c-is/ | He/she/it sees me. |
| ce- | Cehēces. | /ci-hî:c-is/ | He/she/it sees you. |
| Hēces. | /hî:c-is/ | He/she/it sees him/her. | |
| pu- | Puhēces. | /po-hî:c-is/ | He/she/it sees us. |
A third series of dative person markers generally shows the person and number of the indirect object.
| vm | Vm opunayes. | /am-ópona:y-ís/ | He/she is talking to me. |
| cem | Cem opunayes. | /cim-ópona:y-ís/ | He/she is talking to you. |
| em | Em opunayes. | /im-ópona:y-ís/ | He/she is talking to him/her. |
| pum | Pum opunayes. | /pom-ópona:y-ís/ | He/she is talking to us. |
Tenses
Verbs are listed in dictionaries in forms that end in -etv /-ita/. A verb like nesetv /nis-íta/ 'to buy' can appear in five past tense forms depending on how far back an event happened.| Mvskoke | English | ||
| nesetv | /nis-íta/ | to buy | Infinitive |
| nēses | /ni:s-ís/ | he/she is buying it | Present |
| nehses | /níhs-is/ | he/she bought it | Past 1 |
| nēsvnks | /nî:s-ánk-s/ | he/she bought it | Past 2 |
| nēsemvts | /nî:s-imát-s | he/she bought it | Past 3 |
| nēsvntvs | /nî:s-anta-s | he/she bought | Past 4 |
| nēsvtēs | /ni:s-atí:-s | he/she bought | Past 5 |
| nesvrēs | /nis-áɬi:-s | he/she will buy it | Future |
Other categories
Muscogee has suffixes at the ends of sentences indicating the functions of sentences. Statements end in -s, questions seeking a yes or no answer end in -v, and singular commands end in -vs.| Mvskoke | English | ||
| nēses | /ni:s-ís/ | he/she is buying it | statement |
| nēsv? | /ni:s-a/ | is he/she buying it? | question |
| nesvs! | /nis-ás/ | buy it! | command |
Like other Muskogean languages, Muscogee has a system of ablaut or "grades" that indicate distinctions in grammatical aspect.
| Mvskoke | English | ||
| wvnvyetv | /wanay-itá/ | to tie | infinitive |
| wvnvyvs | /wanáy-as/ | tie it! | zero grade |
| wvnayes | /wana:y-ís/ | he/she is tying it | lengthened grade |
| wvnahyes | /wanáhy-is/ | he/she tied it | aspirating grade |
| wvnayes | /wanâ:y-is/ | he/she has tied it | falling tone grade |
| wvnąyes | /wanǎ:ⁿy-is/ | he/she keeps tying it | nasalizing grade |
Verbs in Muscogee sometimes have different forms when their subjects or objects are plural. Verbs like this generally describe position or motion.
| singular subject | dual subject | triplural subject | |
| vretv | welvketv | fulletv | to go about |
| hueretv | sehoketv | svpakletv | to stand |
| letketv | tokorketv | pefatketv | to run |
| wakketv | wakhoketv | lomhetv | to lie |
Vocabulary
| Mvskoke | English |
| erke | father |
| ecke | mother |
| pvwv | maternal uncle |
| erkuce | paternal uncle |
| eckuce | maternal aunt |
| puca | grandfather |
| puse | grandmother, paternal aunt |
| Mvskoke | English |
| Rvfo ’Cuse | January |
| Hotvlē-Hvse | February |
| Tasahcuce | March |
| Tasahce-Rakko | April |
| Kē-Hvse | May |
| Kvco-Hvse | June |
| Hvyuce | July |
| Hvyo-Rakko | August |
| Otvwoskuce | September |
| Otvwoskv-Rakko | October |
| Eholē | November |
| Rvfo-Rakko | December |