// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did the Catawba language say to the dictionary? You're cat-a-bull.
| Catawba | |
|---|---|
| Ye Iswąˀ, Katába nieyé wuininare [1] | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | South Carolina |
| Ethnicity | Ye Iswąre (Catawba), possibly Saraw (Cheraw).[2][3][4][5] |
| Extinct | 1959, with the death of Samuel Taylor Blue |
| Revival | 1989[6] |
Siouan-Catawban
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | chc |
| Glottolog | cata1286 |
| ELP | Catawba |
| Linguasphere | 64-ABA-ab |
 Pre-contact distribution of the Catawba language. | |
 Catawba is classified as Extinct by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger [7] | |
Catawba (/kəˈtɔːbə/ kə-TAW-bə) is one of two Catawban languages of the eastern US, which together with the Siouan languages forms the Siouan-Catawban languages. The last native, fluent speaker of Catawba was Samuel Taylor Blue, who died in 1959.[8] The Catawba people are now working to revitalize and preserve the Catawba language.
Dialects
[edit]The Catawba language has two documented dialects, Esaw and Saraw. Scholar Ives Goddard wrote the Saraw and Esaw dialects of Catawba presumably descend specifically from the Cheraw and the Esaw.[5][2][3][4] Both dialects lasted into the 20th century.[9]
Phonology
[edit]Consonants
[edit]| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p ⟨p⟩ | t ⟨t⟩ | k ⟨k⟩ | ʔ ⟨ʔ⟩ | |
| voiced | b ⟨b⟩ | d ⟨d⟩ | (g ⟨g⟩) | |||
| Affricate | tʃ ⟨č⟩ | |||||
| Nasal | m ⟨m⟩ | n ⟨n⟩ | ||||
| Fricative | s ⟨s⟩ | ʃ ⟨š⟩ | h ⟨h⟩ | |||
| Trill | r ⟨r⟩ | |||||
| Approximant | w ⟨w⟩ | j ⟨y⟩ | ||||
- /ʃ/ rarely occurs.
Vowels
[edit]|
|
- Short vowel sounds /i, e, a, u/ can be heard as lax, ranging to [ɪ, ɛ~ə, ɑ, ʊ].
Orthography
[edit]A Catawba alphabet was created by the Catawba Language Project for the Catawba language, as part of a revitalization effort for the language and the creation of an app for it.[11][further explanation needed]
| A a | α | Ą ą | B b | Č č |
| [aː] | [a]~[ə] | [ã] | [b] | [t͡ʃ] |
| D d | E e | Ɛ ɛ | Ę ę | G g |
| [d] | [eː] | [e] | [ẽ] | [g] |
| H h | ʰ | ʔ | I i | Ii ii |
| [h] | [ʰ] | [ʔ] | [i] | [iː] |
| Į į | K k | M m | N n | P p |
| [ĩ] | [k] | [m] | [n] | [p] |
| R r | S s | T t | U u | Uu uu |
| [r] | [s]~[ʃ] | [t] | [u] | [uː] |
| Ų ų | W w | Y y | Á á | ά |
| [ũ] | [w] | [j] | [áː] | [á]~[ə́] |
| Ą́ ą́ | É é | Ɛ́ έ | Ę ę | Í í |
| [ã́] | [é] | [ɛ́] | [ẽ] | [í] |
| Íí íí | Į́ į́ | Ú ú | Úú úú | Ų́ ų́ |
| [íː] | [ĩ́] | [ú] | [úː] | [ṹ] |
- The aspirated ⟨ʰ⟩ is used in the word: hawuʰ 'thank you'.
- The ⟨ʔ⟩ is written in different ways like ⟨ɂ⟩ and ⟨ˀ⟩ in some texts.
- The ⟨o⟩ and ⟨ǫ⟩ is some time occurs in words like example, mǫ(hare) meaning 'ask', wǫ meaning 'call', mǫhee meaning 'ice', and sota meaning Santee Tribe.
Errata
[edit]Red Thunder Cloud, an impostor, born Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West, claimed to be Catawba and the last speaker of the Catawba language. He was promoted by anthropologist Frank Speck, who introduced West to the Catawba community. The Catawba told Speck that West was not Catawba, but Speck ignored them and continued to promote West and include him in his work, even recommending him as an expert to other anthropologists. Speck at one time also insisted that the Cherokee language was Siouan. At his death in 1996 it was revealed that West 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 Speck brought him to the Catawba reservation. This had apparently been enough to fool the non-Native ethnologists who wrote about him.[14]
References
[edit]- ↑ "Catawba-English Dictionary" (PDF). Retrieved 2025-08-04.
- 1 2 Fitts 2017, pp. 72, 89.
- 1 2 Bauer 2023, pp. 24, 48, 52–54, 58, 66, 177.
- 1 2 Heath 2004, pp. 82, 93–94.
- 1 2 Goddard, Ives (2005). "The Indigenous Languages of the Southeast". Anthropological Linguistics. 47 (1). Bloomington, IN: The Trustees of Indiana University on behalf of Anthropological Linguistics: 9. ISSN 1944-6527. Retrieved 29 July 2026.
The Esaw and Saraw dialects presumably trace back to two aggregations of small tribes that coalesced after the Tuscarora War of 1711-13, the Catawba-Esaw on the Catawba River and the Cheraw-Saraw on the Pee Dee River. The modern Catawba people descend from these two ethnically and linguistically diverse components...
- ↑ "Catawba Language". Catawba Nation Archives. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
- ↑ Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Report) (3rd ed.). UNESCO. 2010. p. 9.
- ↑ Thomas J. Blummer, Catawba Indian Nation: Treasures in History (The History Press, 2007), p. 101
- ↑ Bender 2004, pp. 38, 42.
- ↑ Rudes, Costa, Blair, David (2003). Essays in Algonquian, Catawban, and Siouan Linguistics in Memory of Frank T. Siebert, Jr. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics. ISBN 978-0-921064-16-9.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ "Catawba Language Project". catawbalanguage.org. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
- ↑ "Catawba Consonants" (PDF). Retrieved 2025-08-07.
- ↑ "Catawba Vowels" (PDF). Retrieved 2025-08-07.
- ↑ Goddard, Ives (2000). "The Identity of Red Thunder Cloud" (PDF). The Newsletter -- Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. 19 (1): 7–10. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 October 2023. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
Bibliography
[edit]- Fitts, Mary Elizabeth (2017). Fit for War: Sustenance and Order in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Catawba Nation. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press. ISBN 9781683400059. LCCN 2017001732.
- Bauer, Brooke M. (2023). Frank, Andrew K.; Hudson, Angela Pulley; Ray, Kristofer (eds.). Becoming Catawba: Catawba Indian Women and Nation-Building, 1540–1840. Indians and Southern History. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0- 8173- 9427- 1. OCLC 1350429789.
- Rudes, Blair A. (2004). "Multilingualism in the South". In Bender, Margaret Clelland (ed.). Linguistic Diversity in the South: Changing Codes, Practices, and Ideology, Volume 37. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820325859.
- Heath, Charles L. (2004). Davis, R. P. Stephen Jr. (ed.). "Catawba Militarism: Ethnohistorial and Archaeological Overviews" (PDF). North Carolina Archaeology. 53. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina and The North Carolina Archaeological Society Inc.: 80–120.
External links
[edit]- Ives Goddard, 2000. "The Identity of Red Thunder Cloud", Smithsonian Institution, reprinted from Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas Newsletter. (accessed 2021-05-25)
- Catawba Texts "Catawba Language App"