Choctaw language

The Choctaw language, traditionally spoken by the Native American Choctaw people of the southeastern United States, is a member of the Muskogean family. Although Chickasaw is sometimes listed as a dialect of Choctaw, more extensive documentation of Chickasaw has shown that Choctaw and Chickasaw are best treated as separate but closely related languages.

Orthography

The written Choctaw language is based upon English version of the Roman alphabet and was developed in conjunction with the civilization program of the United States in the early 19th century. Although there are other variations of the Choctaw alphabet, the three most commonly seen are the Byington (Original), Byington/Swanton (Linguistic), and Modern (Mississippi Choctaw).

Byington (Original)

Byington/Swanton (Linguistic)

Modern (Mississippi Choctaw)

Modern (linguistic variant)

Many publications by linguists about the Choctaw language use a slight variant of the "modern (Mississippi Choctaw)" orthography listed here, where long vowels are written as doubled. In the "linguistic" version, the acute accent shows the position of the pitch accent, rather than the length of the vowel.
The discussion of Choctaw grammar below uses the linguistic variant of the orthography.

Choctaw

Choctaw (alternatively spelled Chahta, Chactas, Tchakta, Chocktaw, and Chactaw) are Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States (modern-day Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana). The Choctaw language belongs to the Muskogean linguistic group. The Choctaw are descendants of the peoples of the Hopewell and Mississippian cultures, who lived throughout the east of the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. About 1,700 years ago, the Hopewell people built Nanih Waiya, a great earthwork mound, which is still considered sacred by the Choctaw. The early Spanish explorers of the mid-16th century encountered Mississippian-culture villages and chiefs. The anthropologist John Swanton suggested that the Choctaw derived their name from an early leader. Henry Halbert, a historian, suggests that their name is derived from the Choctaw phrase Hacha hatak (river people).

The Choctaw coalesced as a people in the 17th century, and developed three distinct political and geographical divisions: eastern, western and southern, which sometimes created differing alliances with nearby European powers. These included the French, based on the Gulf Coast and in Louisiana, the English of the Southeast, and the Spanish of Florida and Louisiana during the colonial era. During the American Revolution, most Choctaw supported the Thirteen Colonies' bid for independence from the British Crown. They never went to war against the United States prior to Indian Removal.

List of craters on Mars: A-G

This is a list of craters on Mars. There are hundreds of thousands of impact craters on Mars, but only some of them have names. This list here only contains named Martian craters starting with the letter A – G (see also lists for H – N and O – Z).

Large Martian craters (greater than 60 km in diameter) are named after famous scientists and science fiction authors; smaller ones (less than 60 km in diameter) get their names from towns on Earth. Craters cannot be named for living people, and small crater names are not intended to be commemorative - that is, a small crater isn't actually named after a specific town on Earth, but rather its name comes at random from a pool of terrestrial place names, with some exceptions made for craters near landing sites. Latitude and longitude are given as planetographic coordinates with west longitude.

A

B

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D

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F

G

See also

References

External links

Choctaw (disambiguation)

The Choctaw are a Native American people.

Choctaw may also refer to:

Places

Other