Talk:Choctaw language

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This article was on the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive for the week of May 15, 2005.

Chickasaw[edit]

Although the article states that "it is very closely related to Chickasaw and many linguists consider the two dialects of a single language," Ethnologue states that "Recent reports indicate that Choctaw speakers find Chickasaw to be unintelligible." So what's the actual situation? --Whimemsz 20:10, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out. I think Ethnologue is right. Stancel 21:37, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps. Makes one wish that Ethnologue identifies their what the recent reports are. Politically speaking, Choctaw & Chickasaw are definitely different languages. But, linguistically, I dont know. Here is a bit from Mithun (1999:461) that you may find interesting:

"There are now at least three main dialect groups of Choctaw (Ulrich 1986:2): the Native Choctaws living in the Choctaw Nation in southeastern Oklahoma, the Mississippi Choctaws of Oklahoma living in the Chickasaw Nation of south central Oklahoma around Durwood, and the Choctaws of Mississippi, near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Nicklas mentions an additional community near Tallahassee, Florida, and Munro 1987a notes that some speakers live among the Koasati in Louisiana. There are perhaps 11,000 Choctaw speakers, and children are still learning the language (Aaron Broadwell and Dale Nicklas p.c. 1992). Chickasaw is spoken in Oklahoma by under 1000 people, most over 40 (Munro & Wilmond 1987). It is considered a dialect of Choctaw, but the political division between the two groups is old (Pulte 1975). Pulte & Munro 1987 describe the extensive phonological, morphological, and lexical differences between them. Jacob 1980 reports that after a short period of exposure, native speakers of each can understand the other."

cheers. — ishwar (SPEAK) 20:19, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

OK[edit]

If it is true that the English expression 'OK' comes from a Choctaw expression, could someone who knows enough Choctaw to confirm it add it to the list of examples?

No one knows where 'ok' comes from. see: Okay. peace – ishwar (speak) 05:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"OK" probably comes from the "Cherokee" OH Kee Doh Kee, meaning evrything is alright. Short for Oh-Kee.

Evidence for the Choctaw origin of OK is very weak, in my opinion. --G.broadwell (talk) 21:37, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is one theory that has been advanced seriously, e.g. by Woodrow Wilson. It merits at least a mention here. I agree that it should not be asserted as a fact, but more along the lines of "One theory that has been advanced for the origin of the term "Okay" is that it derives from the Choctaw word okeh." JamesMLane t c 01:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In grade school back in the 1940's I learned that "OK" stemmed from some early nineteenth century American bureaucrat who signed off on documents w/ his initials—O.K. By the way, "Okey-dokey" has nothing to do with any aboriginal American vernacular. None. I was there when this expression came along;

it originated during WWII, possibly from armed forces slang for the at that time itself thought to be slangy "OK".

=Help?==

I have a Chickasaw language dictionary. Could I use it to translate pages on the Choctaw Wikipedia? [1] --Ab e g92contribsBoomer Sooners! 23:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does the dictionary have enough grammatical information that you can contribute with relatively correct Choctaw/Chickasaw grammar? It wouldn't be a case of just plugging Chickasaw or Choctaw words in for English ones in an English sentence; the grammars' of the two languages (English and Choctaw/Chickasaw) are radically different. So, in light of that, I think the differences between Chickasaw and Choctaw which might otherwise cause problems are pretty much moot. Unless you're quite familiar with the grammar of the languages, I'd say it's a bad idea. --Miskwito 23:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mixing up orthographical and phonological terms[edit]

The following line seems to confuse various terms.

"The old Choctaw alphabet consists of 21 letters, two diphthongs, and four nasalized vowels"

An 'alphabet' describes a writing system, so the reference to 21 'letters' is felicitous. But then it goes on to refer to 'diphthongs' and 'nasalized vowels', which are speech sounds represented by the letters of an alphabet, not part of the alphabet.

Judging from the tables given in the article, it seems that the term 'diphthong' should be replaced by the term 'digraph', which properly describes a type of symbol in a writing system (rather than the type of sound it represents). Reference to "four nasalized vowels" could be replaced by a slightly longer but more precise statement like "four vowel symbols marked by diacritics to represent nasalization".

On a somewhat related note, it is unclear why reference is made to the orthography of the language in the introduction when (i) the orthography section proper begins just after the introduction; (ii) the orthography cannot be the most significant information about the language; (iii) other more significant facts are not instead mentioned in that precious space in the introductory section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.119.159.163 (talk) 02:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and I've deleted the discussion from the Intro. The term "diphthong" is in a graphic, so I will hold off on trying to change it to "digraph", though the previous comment is correct on this point.--G.broadwell (talk) 17:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

speak it[edit]

This article needs audio-pronounced words for Choctaw. Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 23:41, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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ʋ[edit]

The original Byington orthography, which one still finds in books in current use (though perhaps not in newly published ones) has the letter ʋ in the second position in the alphabet. The section on orthographies here doesn't have that in a copy-pastable font; wish it did. --Haruo (talk) 23:54, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

wow[edit]

very interesting — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anayguy (talk • contribs) 20:29, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What does koi mean in english[edit]

What does koi mean in English 166.181.87.70 (talk) 15:15, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Weird[edit]

This article is weird. Why is there a picture of someone who translated the Bible into Choctaw in the section about verbs? I guess there are some verbs in the Bible or something, like “to Jesus upon”.

Also, it’s way too long. Like, the level of grammatical detail here is more than that of, say, the page for English. Can we fix this? It’s great to make linguistic material available, but this is crazy. Language Boi (talk) 07:48, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]