A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
| Muscogee | |
|---|---|
| Creek (exonym) | |
| Mvskoke | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | East central Oklahoma, Muscogee and Seminole, south Alabama Creek, Florida, Seminole of Brighton Reservation. |
| Ethnicity | 52,000 Muscogee people (1997)[1] |
Native speakers | 4,500 (2015 census)[1] |
Muskogean
| |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  United States Muscogee Nation |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | mus |
| ISO 639-3 | mus |
| Glottolog | cree1270 |
| ELP | Muskogee |
 Current geographic distribution of the Creek language | |
 Distribution of Native American languages in Oklahoma | |
The Muscogee language (Muskogee, Mvskoke IPA: [maskókî] in Muscogee), previously referred to by its exonym, Creek,[2] is a Muskogean language spoken by Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole people, primarily in the US states of Oklahoma and Florida. Along with Mikasuki, when it is spoken by the Seminole, it is known as Seminole.
Historically, the language was spoken by various constituent groups of the Muscogee or Maskoki in what are now Alabama and Georgia. It is related to but not mutually intelligible with the other primary language of the Muscogee confederacy, Hitchiti-Mikasuki, which is spoken by the kindred Mikasuki, as well as with other Muskogean languages.
The Muscogee first brought the Muscogee and Miccosukee languages to Florida in the early 18th century. Combining with other ethnicities there, they emerged as the Seminole. During the 1830s, however, the US government forced most Muscogee and Seminole to relocate west of the Mississippi River, with most forced into Indian Territory.
The language is today spoken by around 5,000 people, most of whom live in Oklahoma and are members of the Muscogee Nation and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.[3] Around 200 speakers are Florida Seminole. Seminole-speakers have developed distinct dialects.[4]
Current status
Muscogee is widely spoken among the Muscogee people. The Muscogee Nation offers free language classes and immersion camps to Muscogee children.[5]
Language programs
The College of the Muscogee Nation offers a language certificate program.[6][7] Tulsa public schools, the University of Oklahoma[8] and Glenpool Library in Tulsa[9] and the Holdenville,[10] Okmulgee, and Tulsa Muscogee Communities of the Muscogee Nation[11] offer Muscogee Creek language classes. In 2013, the Sapulpa Creek Community Center graduated a class of 14 from its Muscogee language class.[12] 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.[13] It also makes use of the gemination of stops, fricatives and sonorants.[14]
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central | Lateral | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Plosive | p | t | tʃ | k | ||
| Fricative | f | s | ɬ | h | ||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||
Plosives
There are four voiceless stops in Muscogee: /p t t͡ʃ k/. /t͡ʃ/ is a voiceless palatal affricate and patterns as a single consonant and so with the other voiceless stops. /t͡ʃ/ has an alveolar allophone [t͡s] before /k/.[16] The obstruent consonants /p t t͡ʃ k/ are voiced to between sonorants and vowels but remain voiceless at the end of a syllable.[17]
Between instances of [o], or after at the end of a syllable, the velar /k/ is realized as the uvular [q] or [ɢ]. For example:[18]
in-coko 'his or her house' tokná:wa 'money'
Fricatives
There are four voiceless fricatives in Muscogee: /f s ɬ h/. /f/ can be realized as either labiodental [f] or bilabial [ɸ] in place of articulation. Predominantly among speakers in Florida, the articulation of /s/ is more laminal, resulting in /s/ being realized as [ʃ], but for most speakers, /s/ is a voiceless apico-alveolar fricative [s].[19]
Like /k/, the glottal /h/ is sometimes realized as the uvular when it is preceded by or when syllable-final:[18]
oh-leyk-itá 'chair' ohɬolopi: 'year'
Sonorants
The sonorants in Muscogee are two nasals (/m/ and /n/), two semivowels (?pojem= and /j/), and the lateral /l/, all voiced.[20] Nasal assimilation occurs in Muscogee: /n/ becomes [ŋ] before /k/.[18]
Sonorants are devoiced when followed by /h/ in the same syllable and results in a single voiceless consonant:[21]
camhcá:ka 'bell' akcáwhko 'a type of water bird'
Geminates
All plosives and fricatives in Muscogee can be geminated (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 Alabama or Koasati languages, the geminate does not occur.[22]
Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Muscogee are as follows:[15]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | ||
| Close-mid | o oː | ||
| Open | ɑ ɑː |
There are three short vowels /i ɑ o/ and three long vowels /iː ɑː oː/. There are also the nasal vowels /ĩ ɑ̃ õ ĩː ɑ̃ː õː/ (in the linguistic orthography, they are often written with an ogonek 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:[23]
pó-ɬki 'our father' opónɬko 'cutworm'
Short vowels
The three short vowels /i ɑ o/ can be realized as the lax and centralized () when a neighboring consonant is coronal or in closed syllables. However, /ɑ/ will generally not centralize when it is followed by /h/ or /k/ in the same syllable, and /o/ will generally remain noncentral if it is word-final.[22] Initial vowels can be deleted in Muscogee, mostly applying to the vowel /i/. 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').[24]
Long vowelsedit
There are three long vowels in Muscogee (/iː ɑː oː/), 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:[25]
in-ɬa:m-itá 'to uncover, open' in-ɬam-k-itá 'to be uncovered, open'
Diphthongsedit
In Muscogee, there are three diphthongs, generally realized as əɪ ʊj əʊ.[26]
Nasal vowelsedit
Both long and short vowels can be nasalized (the distinction between acces and ącces 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, which indicates intensification through lengthening and nasalization of a vowel (likoth- 'warm' with the nasalizing grade intensifies the word to likŏ:nth-os-i: 'nice and warm').[27] Nasal vowels may also appear as part of a suffix that indicates a question (o:sk-ihá:n 'I wonder if it's raining').[23]
Tonesedit
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: á, etc.), low (unmarked: a, etc.), and falling (marked with a circumflex: â, etc.).
Orthographyedit
The traditional Muscogee alphabet was adopted by the tribe in the late 1800s[28] and has 20 letters.
Although it is based on the Latin alphabet, some sounds are vastly different from those in English like those represented by c, e, i, r, and v. Here are the (approximately) equivalent sounds using familiar English words and the IPA:
| Spelling | Sound (IPA) | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| a | aː ~ a | like the "a" in father |
| c | tʃ ~ ts | like the "ch" in such or the "ts" in cats |
| e | ɪ | like the "i" in hit |
| ē | iː | like the "ee" in seed |
| f | f | like the "f" in father |
| h | h | like the "h" in hatch |
| i | ɛ ~ ɛj | like the "ay" in day |
| k | k | like the "k" in skim |
| l | l | like the "l" in look |
| m | m | like the "m" in moon |
| n | n | like the "n" in moon |
| o | oː ~ ʊ ~ o | like the "o" in bone or the "oo" in book |