Choctaw/Introduction
Choctaw is a language spoken by the Choctaw people. It is related to Chickasaw.
How to Use This Book
This book is organized into bilingual sentences following the comprehensible input theory. You should expect to find 5-10 new words per lesson.
Read and listen to the Choctaw text a few times, trying to understand both the whole meaning of a phrase and the individual words.
- Use the English translation on the right to see a natural translation.
- You will find a word-by-word translation more closely aligned with the Choctaw word order and literal meaning in parentheses.
- Superscripted numbers like this1 point to a grammar note written below the lesson.
- The pronunciation is written below the Choctaw text. Bolded syllables are stressed.
Let's look at an example:
| Chahta | English |
|---|---|
| Halito, chim-achukmah?1 halito! čim‿əčukma(h)? |
Hello! How are you? (hello! you-good?) |
LESSON NOTES
1: achukmah, to be well/good is a category III verb...
Signs used in Pronunciation
Most letters have more or less the same sound as in English, but these require some special attention:
| Symbol | Approximate Sound |
|---|---|
| ə | a in above |
| č | ch as in church |
| š | sh as in sheep |
| u | u as in put |
| õ | o as in no, but nasalized. |
| ã | a as in father, but nasalized. |
| ĩ | ee as in feet, but nasalized. |
| ‿ | (pronounce without stopping) Like how "He's‿a" ('HEE-zuh') rhymes with "visa". |
| ɬ | (traditional) no English equivalent; like L but hissing (newer) like th in thin |
Writing System
Unfortunately (for the learner), Choctaw does not have a single, unified system of writing. This can make things confusing for learners. For example, the sentence "I am well" can be written in many ways:
- amachukmah
- am achukma
- ʋm achukma
- amachokmah
...and so on. This book follows the modern Oklahoma system, but with a few small changes, most notably how verbs are written.
In the Oklahoma system, the so-called "verbal markers" are written separately. This is comparable to as if English "parked" were written as "park ed", where ed is the past tense marker.
In order to better associate what parts belong to verbs and what parts are separate words, "verbal markers" are joined with a hyphen, so "am-achukmah".
Learners should be read to accept that sometimes spelling and/or spacing can vary a bit. A strong command of the oral language makes interpreting written texts much easier.