LANGUAGE FEATURES

Phonetics

The Choctaw alphabet has a very similar syllabary to the English alphabet due the fact that the first written form was developed by English speaking missionaries (Haag & Willis, 2001). Unlike English, however, most letters represent a singular sound.

Although the pronunciation of consonants is similar between the two languages, some differences do exist. One is the unique sound “hl/lh” sound.  The “hl/lh” sound is similar to the English “th” sound (which is now used by some modern speakers), but formation of a more authentic sound is achieved by tongue placement behind the upper teeth and touching the hard palate as air is sent through the mouth and vocalization is made.

When a consonant is doubled, unlike in the English language, pronunciation is affected. Haag & Willis (2001) refer to these as “geminate consonants” and observed that when a consonant is geminated the time holding the consonant is approximately doubled. The meaning can be significantly affected as seen when spelling and speaking the words:

hannali  ‘six’

hanali    ‘leg

Haag & Willis (2001) identify nine Choctaw vowel sounds, as opposed to eleven in English.  The three main distinctions in the vowels are [a], [i] and [o] sounds.  However, further iterations of pronunciation are affected by length and nasality.

[a]

The letter ‘a’ represents the longer sound of “ah”, whereas the Greek letter upsilon “ʋ” represents the short sound. Some writers use the typeset “v” in lieu of the Greek letter.

[i]

For this vowel, the letter ‘i’ can be used for both the short and long sound.  However, the letter ‘e’ solely uses the long sound.

[o]

The letter ‘o’ represents the lengthier “oh” sound and the letter ‘u’ represents the shorter. This can be confusing for English speakers as they tend to insert “oo” or “uh” sounds for the letter ‘u’.

The last distinction is nasality.  Nasalization is used with all three of the main categories of vowels [a], [i], and [o]. This sound is achieved by closing the soft palate while forming the vowel sound.

Written system

For Choctaw language, although published dictionaries exist, a single orthography does not.  Broadwell (2006) notes that most of the differences are in the way the vowels are written, the unique “hl/lh” sound and the phonetic symbols for “sh” and “ch” sounds.  A contributing reason for lack of single spelling system is that at large, Choctaw language/tribal communities experienced long separation (i.e. Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians), facilitated by U.S. federal government agendas and policies in the 1800s and 1900s. Therefore, different tribal language communities have been evolving separately for over a century. Another is that in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, many first language Choctaw speakers have had little to no interaction with Choctaw in its written form.  These first language speakers learned at home and only used Choctaw among their family and fellow tribal community members. Second language speakers often start in a formal education setting with a heavy use of the written form. Therefore, when a second language speaker seeks to communicate in written form with a first language speaker, the former is likely depending on spelling learned in a classroom and the latter using solely a phonetic spelling.