Catawba language facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Catawba |
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|---|---|
| Katapa | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | South Carolina |
| Ethnicity | Ye Iswąˀ (Catawba) |
| Language family |
Siouan
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| Linguasphere | 64-ABA-ab |
Catawba (/kəˈtɔːbə/) is one of two Eastern Siouan languages of the eastern US, which together with the Western Siouan languages formed the Siouan language family.
The last native, fluent speaker of Catawba was Samuel Taylor Blue, who died in 1959. The Catawba tribe is now working to revitalize and preserve the Catawba language.
Contents
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | |
| voiced | b | d | ||||
| Affricate | tʃ | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Fricative | s | ʃ | h | |||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Approximant | w | j | ||||
There is also a [ɡ] sound, which happens to be an allophone of /k/. /ʃ/ rarely occurs.
Vowels
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Short vowel sounds /i, e, a, u/ can be unstressed, ranging to [ɪ, ə~ɛ, ɑ, ʊ]. Back vowel sounds can range from /u/ to [o], and a short /a/ can range to a back vowel sound [ɑ].
Errata
Red Thunder Cloud, an impostor, born Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West, claimed to be the last speaker of the language. At his death in 1996 it was revealed that he was neither Catawba nor even Native American, but had learned what he knew of the language from books, and from listening to the last known native speaker, Samuel Taylor Blue and his half-sister, Sally Gordon, when he visited the Catawba reservation. This had apparently been enough to fool the ethnologists who wrote about him.
