The Muscogee language (also Muskogee , ), previously referred to by its

exonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

, Creek, is spoken by

Muscogee The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek or just Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ( in the Muscogee language; English: ), are a group of related Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands Here they waged war again ...

(Creek) and

Seminole The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, ...

people, primarily in the US states of

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

and

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. Muscogee was historically spoken by various constituent groups of the Muscogee confederacy in what are now

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

and

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

. In the early 18th century some Muscogee speakers began to join speakers of Hitchiti-Mikasuki in

. Combining with other ethnicities there, they emerged as the

. During the 1830s, the US government forced most Muscogee and Seminole to relocate west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...

, with most forced into

Indian Territory Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the Federal government of the United States, United States government for the relocation of Native Americans in the United States, ...

. Muscogee is today spoken by fewer than 400 people, most of whom live in

and are members of the Muscogee Nation and the

Seminole Nation of Oklahoma The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes are legally recognized b ...

. Powell, Amy; Martin, Jack (May 17, 2024). "The Muscogee Language Documentation Project". William & Mary Some speakers of Muscogee are also members of the

Seminole Tribe of Florida The Seminole Tribe of Florida is a List of federally recognized tribes, federally recognized Seminole tribe based in the U.S. state of Florida. Together with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, it is ...

. 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 Muskogean ( ; also Muskhogean) is a language family spoken in the Southeastern United States. Members of the family are Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Typologically, Muskogean languages are highly synthetic and agglutinative. One docume ...

. Muscogee is related to, but not mutually intelligible with,

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is ...

, Koasati, Apalachee, and Hitchiti-Mikasuki.

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 Tulsa ( ) is the second-most-populous city in the state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tul ...

public schools, the

University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma, United States. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two territories became the ...

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

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s and three vowel qualities, which distinguish

length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with Dimension (physical quantity), dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a Base unit (measurement), base unit for length is chosen, ...

, tone and

nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . ...

. It also makes use of the

gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

of stops,

fricatives A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

and

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

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 In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

before . The

obstruent An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well ...

consonants are voiced to between

s and

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s but remain voiceless at the end of a

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

. Between instances of , or after at the end of a syllable, the velar is realized as the uvular or . For example:Martin, 2011, p. 63 :

Fricatives

There are four voiceless fricatives in Muscogee: . can be realized as either labiodental or bilabial in

place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...

. Predominantly among speakers in Florida, the articulation of is more

laminal A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue, in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, ...

, 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 ( and ), two semivowels ( and ), and the lateral , all

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

. 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 In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

(lengthened). 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

or Koasati languages, the geminate does not occur.Martin, 2011, p. 51

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Muscogee are as follows: There are three short vowels and three long vowels . There are also the nasal vowels (in the linguistic orthography, they are often written with an

ogonek The tail or ( ; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American langu ...

under them or a following superscript "n"). 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:Martin, 2011, p. 168-169 :

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 (''fóː'' 'bee') or a two-syllable word ending with a short vowel (''ací'' 'corn').

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 (often from suffixation or contractions) in which a long vowel is followed by a sonorant, the vowel is shortened: :

Diphthongs

In Muscogee, there are three diphthongs, generally realized as .Martin, 2011, p. 183

Nasal vowels

Both long and short vowels can be nasalized (the distinction between and below), 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 In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from German ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its relate ...

, which indicates intensification through lengthening and nasalization of a vowel ( 'warm' with the nasalizing grade intensifies the word to 'nice and warm'). Nasal vowels may also appear as part of a suffix that indicates a question ( 'I wonder if it's raining').

Tones

There are three phonemic tones in Muscogee; they are generally unmarked except in the linguistic orthography: high (marked in the linguistic orthography with an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

: á, etc.), low (unmarked: a, etc.), and falling (marked with a

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...

: â, etc.).

Orthography

The traditional Muscogee

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

was adopted by many interpreters and chiefs as the "National Alphabet" in 1853Martin 2011, p. 22 and has 20 letters. Although it is based on the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, some sounds like c, e, i, r, and v differ from those in English. Here are the (approximately) equivalent sounds using familiar English words and the IPA: There are also three vowel sequences whose spellings match their phonetic makeup:

Consonants

As mentioned above, certain consonants in Muscogee, when they appear between two sonorants (a vowel or m, n, l, w, or y), become

. They are the consonants represented by p, t, k, c, and s: * c can sound like , the "j" in just * k can sound like , the "g" in goat * p can sound like , the "b" in boat * s can sound like , the "z" in zoo * t can sound like , the "d" in dust

Vowel 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 ( vs. ) * The short vowel e with the long vowel ē ( vs. ) * The short vowel u with the long vowel o ( vs. ) However, the correspondences do not always apply, and in some words, short is spelled a, long is spelled e, and short is spelled o.

Nonstandard orthography

Muscogee words carry distinctive tones and

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 (2000) and Innes (2004): * Falling tone in a syllable is shown using a

. 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 ("she is putting on (a dress)") to alters the meaning from one of process to one of state ("she is wearing (a dress)"). * Nasalization of a vowel is shown with an

under the vowel. Changing the verb to adds the imperfective aspect, a sense of repeated or habitual action ("she kept putting on (that same dress)").

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: (possessor or demonstrative) — noun — (adjective) — (numeral).

Adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

s tend to occur either at the beginning of the sentence (for time adverbs) or immediately before the verb (for manner adverbs). Muscogee uses postpositions instead of prepositions.

Case

Noun phrases may be marked with

clitics In Morphology (linguistics), morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , Back-formation, backformed from Ancient Greek, Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) ...

indicating the role of noun phrases in a sentence. The basic distinction is between subjects (which may end in -t) and nonsubjects (which may end in -n). 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. Nouns other than body parts and kinship terms are generally possessed with a different set of markers.

Person marking

Muscogee has three series of person markers on verbs.Martin, Jack B., and Margaret McKane Mauldin. 2001. Creek. ''Facts about the World’s Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World’s Major Languages, Past and Present''. Jane Garry and Carl Rubino, eds., 173–176. New York / Dublin: H. W. Wilson. The agent (type I) 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. The patient (type II) person markers often indicate the person and number of direct objects. A third series of dative (type D) person markers generally shows the person and number of the indirect object.

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.

Other categories

Muscogee has suffixes at the ends of sentences indicating the functions of sentences. Statements end in ''-(e)s'', questions seeking a yes or no answer end in -''v'', and singular commands end in -''vs''. Like other Muskogean languages, Muscogee has a system of ablaut or "grades" that indicate distinctions in

grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference t ...

. Verbs in Muscogee sometimes have different forms when their subjects or objects are plural. Verbs like this generally describe position or motion.

Dialects

The three main dialects of Muscogee are Muscogee proper (used in the Muscogee Nation), 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. 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 ddistinct endings to verbs", while females "accent ddifferent syllables". These forms, mentioned in the first (1860) grammar of the Muscogee language, persisted in the Hichiti, Muscogee proper, and Koasati languages at least into the first half of the 20th century.

Vocabulary

References

Citations

Bibliography

* Haas, Mary R. and James H. Hill. 2014. Creek (Muskogee) Texts. Edited and translated by Jack B. Martin, Margaret McKane Mauldin, and Juanita McGirt. UC Publications in Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. * * * * * *

External links

Mvskoke Opunvkv
Mvskoke Language Department of the Muscogee Nation * Th
Muscogee (Seminole/Creek) Documentation Project
This site provides links to many older materials, a dictionary, interviews, and learning materials.
Muskogee (Creek) Nation
official website
Acoustic vowel reduction in Creek: Effects of distinctive length and position in the word
(pdf)
Mvskoke Nakcokv Eskerretv Esvhokkolat. Creek Second Reader. (1871)

Muskogee Genesis Translation

OLAC resources in and about the Creek language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muskogean Language Agglutinative languages Muskogean languages Indigenous languages of Oklahoma Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast Muscogee culture Seminole culture Indigenous languages of Florida

Current status

Language programs

Phonology

Consonants

Plosives

Fricatives

Sonorants

Geminates

Vowels

Short vowels

Long vowels

Diphthongs

Nasal vowels

Tones

Orthography

Consonants

Vowel length

Nonstandard orthography

Grammar

Word order

Case

Possession

Person marking

Tenses

Other categories

Dialects

Vocabulary

See also

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links