Pawnee or ’ is a Caddoan language traditionally spoken by Pawnee Native Americans, currently inhabiting north-central Oklahoma. Historically, the Pawnee lived along the Platte River in what is now Nebraska.
Dialects Two important dialect divisions are evident in Pawnee: South Band and Skiri. The distinction between the two dialects rests on differences in their respective phonetic inventory and lexicon. The Skiri dialect became extinct in 2001 with the death of Lula Nora Pratt.Douglas Parks and Lula Nora Pratt (2008) A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee
Status As of 2007, there are fewer than 10 native speakers, all elderly. The Pawnee Nation is developing teaching materials for the local high school and for adult language classes. There are also extensive documentary materials in the language archived at the American Indian Studies Research Institute. The Pawnee language can be heard spoken in the 1990 movie Dances With Wolves and the 2015 movie The Revenant. In 2019 and 2020, the Pawnee Nation posted online videos teaching the Pawnee language.
Phonology The following describes the South Band dialect.
Consonants Pawnee has eight consonant phonemes, and according to one analysis of medial- and final-position glottal stops, one may posit a ninth consonant phoneme.
Bilabial Alveolar Velar Glottal Stop Affricate Rhotic Fricative Approximant
is predictable when it occurs in the middle of words. However, since is not completely predictable at the end of words, it may also need to be considered a phoneme.
Vowels
Pawnee has four short and four long vowel phonemes.
Front Back High Mid-low
Phonotactics Consonant clusters are common in Pawnee in initial, medial, and final positions. These clusters fall into a small number of types, illustrated in the table below. The sequence patterns as a single unit in initial and medial clusters, and so it is not considered a cluster in itself. +C1C2ExamplesInitial "to fly" "flesher"Medial "two" "again"any consonant except "captive"Final "to be open" "to live, exist" Vowel sequences are allowed morpheme-internally and across morpheme boundaries. Pawnee distinguishes between long vowels, doubled vowels (e.g. "four"), long + short vowel sequences ( "trotter"), and short-long vowel sequences ( "snipe"). No morpheme contains two long vowels in sequence, however.
Morphology Pawnee is an ergative-absolutive polysynthetic language.
Alphabet The Pawnee alphabet has nine consonants and eight vowels. The letters are relatively similar in pronunciation to their English counterparts.
Consonants
Spelling Sound (IPA) English equivalentsp poke, cupt top, catk cool, stuckc ~ shell, push ~ pantss silly, faceh heart, aheadr car, ferryw wacky, away′ The "-" in uh-oh
Vowels
Spelling Sound (IPA) English equivalentsi sitii feede redee paida nutaa fatheruʊ bookuu rude
Other alphabets Here are other alphabets that are used sometimes in Pawnee texts.
+ Pawnee Alphabet #1 a â c č e ê h i î k p r s t u û w ‘
+ Pawnee Alphabet #2 a aa ch e ee h i ii k o oo p r s t ts u uu w ‘
Notes
References American Indian Studies Research Institute. (2008). Dictionary Database: Pawnee (Skiri and Southband dialects). American Indian Studies Research Institute. (2001). Pawnee Alphabet Book. Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . Parks, Douglas R. (1976). A grammar of Pawnee. New York: Garland. Taylor, Allan R. (1978). [Review of A grammar of Pawnee by D. Parks]. Language, 54 (4), 969-972.
External links
Pawnee Language Program, sponsored by the Pawnee Nation and Indiana University