The Pawnee language is a

Caddoan language The Caddoan languages are a family of languages native to the Great Plains spoken by tribal groups of the central United States, from present-day North Dakota south to Oklahoma. All Caddoan languages are critically endangered, as the number of ...

traditionally spoken by

Pawnee Pawnee initially refers to a Native American people and its language: * Pawnee people * Pawnee language Pawnee is also the name of several places in the United States: * Pawnee, Illinois * Pawnee, Kansas * Pawnee, Missouri * Pawnee City, Nebraska ...

Native Americans, currently inhabiting in north-central

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

. Historically, the Pawnee lived along the

Platte River The Platte River () is a major river in the State of Nebraska. It is about long; measured to its farthest source via its tributary, the North Platte River, it flows for over . The Platte River is a tributary of the Missouri River, which itself ...

in what is now

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

Dialects

Two important

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

divisions are evident in Pawnee: South Band and ''Skiri''. The distinction between the two dialects rests on differences in their respective

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

inventory and

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

Status

Prior to colonization and US expansion, Pawnee was spoken by all members of the Nation. Today Pawnee is only spoken fluently by a shrinking number of elderly speakers. As more young people shift to

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

as their first language, the transmission of Pawnee and its

vitality Vitality (, , ) is the capacity to live, grow, or develop. More simply it is the property of having life. The perception of vitality is regarded as a basic psychological drive and, in philosophy, a component to the will to live. As such, peopl ...

are seriously endangered. As of 2007, the Pawnee Nation is developing teaching materials for the local high school and for adult language classes. There are also extensive documentary materials in the language archived at the American Indian Studies Research Institute. The Pawnee language can be heard spoken in the 2015 movie '' The Revenant''. In 2019 and 2020, the Pawnee Nation has posted online videos teaching the Pawnee language.

Phonology

The following describes the South Band dialect.

Consonants

Pawnee has eight

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...

s, and according to one analysis of medial- and final-position glottal stops, one may posit a ninth consonant phoneme. * is predictable when it occurs in the middle of words. However, since is not completely predictable at the end of words, it may also need to be considered a phoneme.

Vowels

Pawnee has four

short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

phonemes and four

long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...

counterparts (also phonemic).

Morphology

Pawnee is an ergative-absolutive

polysynthetic language In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able t ...

Alphabet

The Pawnee

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...

has 9 consonants and 8 vowels. The letters are relatively similar in pronunciation to their English counterparts.

Consonants

Vowels

Notes

References

*American Indian Studies Research Institute. (2008)
Dictionary Database: Pawnee (Skiri and Southband dialects)
*American Indian Studies Research Institute. (2001)

* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Parks, Douglas R. (1976). ''A grammar of Pawnee''. New York: Garland. * Taylor, Allan R. (1978). eview of ''A grammar of Pawnee'' by D. Parks ''Language'', ''54'' (4), 969-972.

External links

Pawnee Language Program
sponsored by the Pawnee Nation and Indiana University {{Authority control Pawnee Indigenous languages of the North American Plains Caddoan languages Polysynthetic languages Indigenous languages of Oklahoma Endangered Caddoan languages Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas