The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language traditionally spoken by Pawnee Native Americans, currently inhabiting north-central

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 ...

. Historically, the Pawnee lived along the Platte River in what is now

Nebraska Nebraska ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Ka ...

Dialects

Two important

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

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 (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) 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 Greek word () ...

. The Skiri dialect became extinct in 2001 with the death of Lula Nora Pratt.Douglas Parks and Lula Nora Pratt (2008) ''A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee''

Status

As of 2007, there are fewer than 10 native speakers, all elderly. 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 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, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

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

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 ...

phonemes and four long 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 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 ...

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

Consonants

Vowels

Other alphabets

Here are other alphabets that are used sometimes in Pawnee texts.

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