Muscogee language

Muscogee
Creek (exonym)
Mvskoke
Pronunciation	[maskókî]
Native to	United States
Region	East central Oklahoma, Muscogee and Seminole, south Alabama Creek, Florida, Seminole of Brighton Reservation.
Ethnicity	100,000 Muscogee people (2024)
Native speakers	<400 (2024)
Language family	Muskogean Eastern Muscogee
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 (also Muskogee [maskó:gi], Mvskoke [ma(:)skó:gi]), previously referred to by its exonym, Creek, is spoken by Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole people, primarily in the US states of Oklahoma and Florida.

Muscogee was historically spoken by various constituent groups of the Muscogee confederacy in what are now Alabama and Georgia. In the early 18th century some Muscogee speakers began to join speakers of Hitchiti-Mikasuki in Florida. Combining with other ethnicities there, they emerged as the Seminole. During the 1830s, the US government forced most Muscogee and Seminole to relocate west of the Mississippi River, with most forced into Indian Territory.

Muscogee is today spoken by fewer than 400 people, most of whom live in Oklahoma and are members of the Muscogee Nation and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Some speakers of Muscogee are also members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. 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. Muscogee is related to, but not mutually intelligible with, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama, 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 public schools, the University of Oklahoma 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 consonants and three vowel qualities, which distinguish length, tone and nasalization. It also makes use of the gemination of stops, fricatives and sonorants.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Muscogee

	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/. The obstruent consonants /p t t͡ʃ k/ are voiced to [b d d͡ʒ ɡ] between sonorants and vowels but remain voiceless at the end of a syllable.

Between instances of [o], or after [o] at the end of a syllable, the velar /k/ is realized as the uvular [q] or [ɢ]. For example:

in-coko		'his or her house'		[ɪnd͡ʒʊɢo]
tokná:wa		'money'		[toqnɑːwə]

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].

Like /k/, the glottal /h/ is sometimes realized as the uvular [χ] when it is preceded by [o] or when syllable-final:

oh-leyk-itá		'chair'		[oχlejɡɪdə]
ohɬolopi:		'year'		[oχɬolobiː]

Sonorants

The sonorants in Muscogee are two nasals (/m/ and /n/), two semivowels (/w/ and /j/), and the lateral /l/, all voiced. Nasal assimilation occurs in Muscogee: /n/ becomes [ŋ] before /k/.

Sonorants are devoiced when followed by /h/ in the same syllable and results in a single voiceless consonant:

camhcá:ka		'bell'		[t͡ʃəm̥t͡ʃɑːɡə]
akcáwhko		'a type of water bird'		[ɑkt͡ʃəw̥ko]

Geminates

All plosives and fricatives in Muscogee can be geminated (lengthened). Some sonorants may also be geminated, but [hh] and [mm] 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 [ww] does not occur.

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Muscogee are as follows:

	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:

pó-ɬki		'our father'
opónɬko		'cutworm'

Short vowels

The three short vowels /i ɑ o/ can be realized as the lax and centralized ([ɪ ə ʊ]) 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. 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').

Long vowels

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:

in-ɬa:m-itá		'to uncover, open'
in-ɬam-k-itá		'to be uncovered, open'

Diphthongs

In Muscogee, there are three diphthongs, generally realized as [əɪ ʊj əʊ].

Nasal vowels

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'). Nasal vowels may also appear as part of a suffix that indicates a question (o:sk-ihá:ⁿ '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: á, etc.), low (unmarked: a, etc.), and falling (marked with a circumflex: â, etc.).

Orthography

The traditional Muscogee alphabet was adopted by many interpreters and chiefs as the "National Alphabet" in 1853 and has 20 letters.

Although it is based on the Latin alphabet, 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:

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	ɛj ~ ɛ:	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
p	p	like the "p" in spot
r	ɬ	a sound that does not occur in English but is often represented as "hl" or "thl" in English spellings. The sound is made by blowing air around the sides of the tongue while pronouncing English l and is identical to Welsh ll.
s	s	like the "s" in spot
t	t	like the "t" in stop
u	ʊ ~ o	like the "oo" in book or the "oa" in boat
v	ə ~ a	like the "a" in about
w	w	like the "w" in wet
y	j	like the "y" in yet

There are also three vowel sequences whose spellings match their phonetic makeup:

Spelling	Sound (IPA)	English equivalent
eu	iʊ	similar to the exclamation "ew!". A combination of the sounds represented by e and u
ue	oɪ	like the "oy" in boy
vo	aʊ ~ əʊ	like the "ow" in how

Consonants

As mentioned above, certain consonants in Muscogee, when they appear between two sonorants (a vowel or m, n, l, w, or y), become voiced. They are the consonants represented by p, t, k, c, and s:

• c can sound like [dʒ], the "j" in just
• k can sound like [ɡ], the "g" in goat
• p can sound like [b], the "b" in boat
• s can sound like [z], the "z" in zoo
• t can sound like [d], 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 (/a/ vs. /aː/)
• The short vowel e with the long vowel ē (/i/ vs. /iː/)
• The short vowel u with the long vowel o (/o/ vs. /oː/)

However, the correspondences do not always apply, and in some words, short /a/ is spelled a, long /iː/ is spelled e, and short /o/ is spelled o.

Nonstandard orthography

Muscogee words carry distinctive tones and nasalization of their vowels. These features are not marked in the traditional orthography, only 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 circumflex. 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 acces ("she is putting on (a dress)") to âcces alters the meaning from one of process to one of state ("she is wearing (a dress)").
• Nasalization of a vowel is shown with an ogonek under the vowel. Changing the verb acces to ącces adds the imperfective aspect, a sense of repeated or habitual action ("she kept putting on (that same dress)").
• The key syllable of a word is often shown with an accent and is the last syllable that has normal (high) tone within a word; the following syllables are all lower in pitch.

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.

Efvt	pose	lvstēn	assēces.
ifá-t	pó:si	lást-i:-n	á:ssi:c-ís
dog-SUBJECT	cat	black-DURATIVE-NONSUBJECT	chase.LGR-INDICATIVE
The dog is chasing the black cat.

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). Adverbs 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 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".

Person marking

Muscogee has three series of person markers on verbs. The agent (type I) person markers are generally used for subjects that perform an action on purpose. Agent person markers are suffixed to the verb root.

Agent person markers

-i	Hompis.	/homp-éy-s/	I am eating.
-etsk	Hompetskes.	/homp-íck-is/	You are eating.
(no mark)	Hompes.	/homp-ís/	He/she/it is eating..
-ē	Hompēs.	/homp-í:-s/	We are eating.
-atsk	Hompatskes.	/homp-á:ck-is/	You all are eating.

The patient (type II) person markers indicate the person and number of subjects that do not control the action in a verb. Words translating as adjectives generally use patient person markers for their subjects. Patient person markers are also used to indicate the person and number of the direct object.

Patient person markers

cv-	Cvhaktēsikes.	/ca-hakti:sêyk-is/	I sneezed.
ce-	Cehaktēsikes.	/ci-hakti:sêyk-is/	You sneezed.
(no mark)	Haktēsikes.	/hakti:sêyk-is/	He/she/it sneezed.
pu-	Puhaktēsikes.	/po-hakti:sêyk-is/	We sneezed.

A third series of dative (type D) person markers generally shows the person and number of the indirect object.

Dative person markers

vm	Vm opunayes.	/am-ópona:y-ís/	He/she is talking to me.
cem	Cem opunayes.	/cim-ópona:y-ís/	He/she is talking to you.
em	Em opunayes.	/im-ópona:y-ís/	He/she is talking to him/her.
pum	Pum opunayes.	/pom-ópona:y-ís/	He/she is talking to us.

Verbs

In Muscogee, a single verb can translate into an entire English sentence. The root infinitive form of the verb is altered for:

• Tense. Pohetv = to hear.
  • Pohis. = I am hearing (present).
  • Pohhis. = I just heard (first or immediate past; within a day ago).
  • Pohvhanis. = I am going to hear.
  • Pohares. = I will hear.
  • Pohiyvnks. = I heard recently (second or middle past, within a week ago).
  • Pohimvts. = I heard (third or distant past, within a year ago).
  • Pohicatēs. = Long ago I heard (fourth or remote past, beyond a year ago).
  • There are at least ten more tenses, including perfect versions of the above, as well as future, indefinite, and pluperfect.
• Mood. Wiketv = to stop.
  • Wikes. = He / She is stopping (indicative).
  • Wikvs. = Stop! (imperative)
  • Wike wites. = He / She may stop (potential).
  • Wiken omat. = If he / she stops (subjunctive).
  • Wikepices. = He / She made someone stop (causative).
• Aspect. Kerretv = to learn.
  • Kērris. = I am learning (progressive, ongoing or in progress).
  • Kêrris. = I know (resulting state).
  • Kęrris. = I keep learning (imperfect, habitual or repeated action).
  • Kerîyis. = I just learned (action completed in the past).
• Voice.
  • Wihkis. = I just stopped (active voice, 1st past).
  • Cvwihokes. = I was just stopped (passive voice, 1st past).
• Negatives.
  • Wikarēs. = I will stop (positive, future tense).
  • Wikakarēs. = I will not stop (negative, future tense).
• Questions. Hompetv = to eat; nake = what.
  • Hompetskes. = You are eating.
  • Hompetskv? = Are you eating? (expecting a yes or no answer)
  • Naken hompetska? = What are you eating? (expecting a long answer)

Verbs with irregular plurals

Some Muscogee verbs, especially those involving motion, have highly irregular plurals: letketv = to run, with a singular subject, but tokorketv = to run of two subjects and pefatketv = to run of three or more.

Stative verbs

Another entire class of Muscogee verbs is the stative verbs, which express no action, imply no duration, and provide only description of a static condition. In some languages, such as English, they are expressed as adjectives. In Muscogee, the verbs behave like adjectives but are classed and treated as verbs. However, they are not altered for the person of the subject by an affix, as above; instead, the prefix changes:

enokkē = to be sick;

enokkēs = he / she is sick;

cvnokkēs = I'm sick;

cenokkēs = you are sick.

Locative prefixes

Prefixes are also used in Muscogee for shades of meaning of verbs that are expressed, in English, by adverbs in phrasal verbs. For example, in English, the verb to go can be changed to to go up, to go in, to go around, and other variations. In Muscogee, the same principle of shading a verb's meaning is handled by locative prefixes:

Example:

• vyetv = to go (singular subjects only, see above);
• ayis = I am going;
• ak-ayis = I am going (in water / in a low place / under something);
• tak-ayis = I am going (on the ground);
• oh-ayis = I am going (on top of something).

However, for verbs of motion, Muscogee has a large selection of verbs with a specific meaning: ossetv = to go out; ropottetv = to go through.

Switch-reference

Clauses in a sentence use switch-reference clitics to co-ordinate their subjects. The clitic -t on a verb in a clause marks that the verb's subject is the same as that of the next clause. The clitic -n marks that verb's subject is different from the next clause.

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.

Relational possession

cv-	cvpuse	/ca-pósi/	my grandmother
ce-	cepuse	/ci-pósi/	your grandmother
e-	epuse	/ipósi/	his/her grandmother
pu-	pupuse	/po-pósi/	our grandmother

Nouns other than body parts and kinship terms are generally possessed with a different set of markers.

Nonrelational possession

vm	vm efv	/am-ífa/	my dog
cem	cem efv	/ci-pósi/	your dog
em	em efv	/ipósi/	his/her dog
pum	pum efv	/po-pósi/	our dog

Examples

• Family.
  • Erke. = Father.
  • Ecke. = Mother.
  • Pvwv. = Maternal Uncle.
  • Erkuce. = Paternal Uncle.
  • Eckuce. = Maternal Aunt.
  • Puca. = Grandpa.
  • Puse. = Grandma, Paternal Aunt.
  • Cēpvnē. = Boy.
  • Hoktuce. = Girl.

Male vs. female speech

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[ed] distinct endings to verbs", while females "accent[ed] different 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.

Seminole dialects

The forms of Muscogee used by the Seminoles of Oklahoma and Florida are separate dialects from the ones spoken by Muscogee people. Oklahoma Seminole speak a dialect known as Oklahoma Seminole Creek. Florida Seminole Creek is one of two languages spoken among Florida Seminoles; it is less common than the Mikasuki language. 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 Creek is the most endangered register of the Muscogee language.

See also

• Muscogee people
• Creek mythology
• Muskogean languages
• Mikasuki language

References

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.
• Hardy, Donald E. (January 2005). "Creek". In Hardy, Heather K.; Scancarelli, Janine (eds.). Native Languages of the Southeastern United States. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (published 2005). pp. 200–245. ISBN 0803242352.
• Johnson, Keith; Martin, Jack (2001). "Acoustic Vowel Reduction in Creek: Effects of Distinctive Length and Position in the Word" (PDF). Phonetica. 58 (1–2): 81–102. doi:10.1159/000028489. PMID 11096370. S2CID 38872292. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-06-26. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
• Innes, Pamela; Linda Alexander; Bertha Tilkens (2004). Beginning Creek: Mvskoke Emponvkv. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3583-2.
• Loughridge, R.M.; David M. Hodge (1964). Dictionary Muskogee and English. Okmulgee, OK: Baptist Home Mission Board.
• Martin, Jack B. (2011). A Grammar of Creek (Muskogee). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803211063.
• Martin, Jack B.; Margaret McKane Maudlin (2000). A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-8302-4.

External links

• Mvskoke Opunvkv, Mvskoke Language Department of the Muscogee Nation
• The 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