Timucua language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Timucua
Pronunciation	IPA: [tiˈmuːkwa]
Native to	United States
Region	Florida, Southeastern Georgia, Eastern Texas
Extinct	second half 18th century
Language family	Language isolate
Dialects	Tawasa ?
Writing system	Published in the Spanish alphabet, 1612–1635
Linguist List	tjm
Pre-contact distribution of the Timucua language. The Tawasa dialect, if it was Timucua, would have been geographically isolated in Alabama
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The Timucua language was once spoken by the Timucua people. They lived in northern and central Florida and southern Georgia. When the Spanish arrived in Florida, Timucua was the main language spoken there.

There were about nine or ten different ways of speaking Timucua, called dialects. These dialects were very similar. They mostly helped show the borders between different Timucua groups or tribes. Some experts think the Tawasa people in what is now northern Alabama might have also spoken a Timucua dialect, but this is still debated.

Most of what we know about the Timucua language comes from a Franciscan missionary named Francisco Pareja. He arrived in St. Augustine in 1595. During his 31 years with the Timucua people, he created a writing system for their language. This was the first writing system for an indigenous language in the Americas.

From 1612 to 1628, Pareja published several books. These included Spanish-Timucua catechisms (religious teaching books) and a grammar book about the Timucua language. His 1612 book was the first ever published in an indigenous language in the Americas.

Only ten original sources about the Timucua language still exist today. These include Pareja's seven books. There are also two catechisms written in Timucua and Spanish by Gregorio de Movilla in 1635. Plus, there is a Timucuan letter from 1688, translated into Spanish, sent to the Spanish Crown.

In 1763, the British took over Florida from Spain after the Seven Years' War. Most Spanish colonists and Native Americans from the missions, including the few remaining Timucua speakers, moved to Cuba, near Havana. Because of this, the Timucua language eventually became extinct.

Timucua Language Family

The Timucua language is a language isolate. This means it is not clearly related to any other languages spoken in North America. It also doesn't seem to have borrowed many words from other languages.

Some ideas suggest it might be related to Muskogean languages. Others think it could be connected to language families in South America, like Cariban or Arawakan. However, most language experts do not widely accept these ideas.

Timucua Dialects

Father Pareja identified about nine or ten different dialects of Timucua. Each dialect was spoken by one or more tribes in northeast Florida and southeast Georgia.

Here are some of the main dialects he named:

• Timucua proper – Spoken by the Northern Utina tribe. They lived between the lower St. Johns River and the Suwannee River in Florida, and into southern Georgia.
• Potano – Spoken by the Potano tribe, and possibly the Yustaga and Ocale tribes. They lived between the Aucilla River and the Suwannee River in Florida.
• Mocama (meaning 'ocean' in Timucua) – Spoken by the Mocama people, including the Tacatacuru and Saturiwa tribes. They lived along the Atlantic coast of Florida and Georgia.
• Agua Salada (Spanish for 'salt water') – Spoken along the Atlantic coast near St. Augustine.
• Agua Fresca (or Agua Dulce; Spanish for "fresh water") – Spoken by the Agua Dulce people along the lower St. Johns River.
• Acuera – Spoken by the Acuera tribe, near the Oklawaha River and Lake Weir.

All the written information we have about Timucua comes from the Mocama and Potano dialects.

Experts don't fully agree on the exact number of dialects. Some believe that Pareja's "Agua Salada" was just another name for the Mocama dialect. Others argue they were separate dialects.

There was also a theory that the Tawasa people of Alabama spoke a Timucua dialect. This idea came from a short list of words from a man named Lamhatty in 1708. However, the evidence for this connection is not very strong.

Timucua Sounds and Words

Missionaries wrote Timucua using the Spanish alphabet in the 1600s. This helps us understand how the language sounded.

Consonants

Timucua had 14 consonant sounds. These included sounds like 'p', 't', 'k', 'm', 'n', 's', 'l', and 'r'. Some sounds were written differently depending on the vowel that followed them. For example, the 'k' sound could be written as 'c' or 'q'.

Vowels

Timucua had 5 vowel sounds, similar to 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'. Each vowel could be spoken as a short or a long sound.

Word Stress

In Timucua, shorter words (one to three syllables) usually had the main stress on the first syllable. For longer words, the first syllable had the main stress, and other syllables had a lighter stress.

For example:

• yobo (stone) was pronounced like [yóbò]
• nipita (mouth) was pronounced like [nípìtà]

How Words Change

Timucua words could change their sounds when put together. This happened when one word ended in a vowel and the next word started with a vowel. For example, tera (good) + acola (very) became teracola (very good).

Words could also be repeated to show how strong an action was. For instance, noro (devotion) + mo (do) + -ta (durative) could become noronoromota (do it with great devotion).

Timucua Grammar

Timucua was a synthetic language. This means words often had many parts added to them to show their meaning.

Word Parts

Timucua words were made of different parts:

• Bases: These were the main parts of words that carried the meaning. Some bases could stand alone, while others always needed other parts attached.
• Affixes: These were small parts added to bases. They included prefixes (at the beginning), suffixes (at the end), and enclitics (at the end, but often carried the main stress).

Pronouns

Only the words for "I" and "you" (singular) were independent pronouns. Other pronoun information was usually part of other words. Timucua did not have different words for "he" or "she." The word oqe could mean 'she, her, to her, he, him, to him, it, to it,' and its exact meaning depended on the rest of the sentence.

Nouns

Nouns in Timucua could have many parts added to them. For a word to be a noun, it usually needed a base and sometimes a plural marker.

Verbs

Timucua verbs were very complex. They could have many different parts added to them. However, Timucua verbs did not have different forms for past, present, or future tense. The time of an action was understood from the context.

Particles

Particles were small words that could act as nouns, adverbs, prepositions, or demonstratives (like "this" or "that"). They were often combined with other words.

Some examples of particles:

• amiro 'much, many'
• becha 'tomorrow'
• na 'this'
• pu, u, ya 'no'

How Sentences Were Built

Timucua had a different word order than English. In English, we usually say Subject-Verb-Object (e.g., "The boy eats apples"). In Timucua, the order was Subject-Object-Verb. So, it would be more like "The boy apples eats."

Timucua had six main types of words: verbs, nouns, pronouns, modifiers (which included both adjectives and adverbs), demonstratives, and conjunctions. A word's role in a sentence was often figured out by where it was placed.

Phrases

Phrases usually had two words. One word was the "head-word," which set the main meaning. The other word changed or added to the head-word's meaning. If the second word came after the head-word, it usually modified it. If it came before, it could change its role. For example, a particle before a noun could become a demonstrative.

Sentences

Most Timucua sentences were simple, with one main idea. Sometimes, they had extra parts that added more information.

Sample Vocabulary

Sample Text

Here is an example from Father Pareja's Confessionario. It shows a priest asking questions to Timucua speakers who were preparing to become Christians.

Hachipileco, cacaleheco, chulufi eyolehecote, nahebuasota, caquenchabequestela, mota una yaruru catemate, caquenihabe, quintela manta bohobicho? La graja canta o otra aue, y el cuerpo me parece que me tiembla, señal es que vine gente que ay algo de nuebo, as lo assi creydo? Do you believe that when the crow or another bird sings and the body is trembling, that is a signal that people are coming or something important is about to happen?

See also

In Spanish: Idioma timucua para niños