// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhy did Sewee language go to therapy? It was feeling a little sewn up.
| Sewee | |
|---|---|
| Native to | United States |
| Region | South Carolina |
| Ethnicity | Sewee |
| Era | attested 1670 |
unclassified (Siouan-Catawban?) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
07z | |
| Glottolog | None |
The Sewee language is a poorly attested and unclassified language once spoken by the Sewee, a historical Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands from present-day South Carolina.
Vocabulary
[edit]Some Sewee words were recorded in 1670[1] by Nicholas Carteret and William Owen.[2][3]: 1639
- appada ‘friend’ (?) (recorded by Carteret)
- hiddie dod ‘a word of great kindness among them’ (recorded by Owen)
- hiddeskeh ‘sickly’ (recorded by Owen)
- Hiddy doddy Comorado Angles Westoe Skorrye ‘English very good friends, Westoes are nought’ (recorded by Carteret) (Comorado is a Spanish loanword, from camarada 'comrade')[4]
Based on the geographical location of the Sewee people, Zamponi (2024) hypothesizes that the Sewee language may have been a Siouan-Catawban language, although he could not find any evidence of Siouan-Catawban morphemes in any attested Sewee words and phrases.[3]
References
[edit]- ↑ Waddell, Gene. 1980. Indians of the South Carolina lowcountry 1562–1751. Columbia, SC: Southern Studies Program, University of South Carolina.
- ↑ Cheves, Langdon (ed.). 1897. The Shaftesbury papers and other records relating to Carolina and the first settlement on Ashley River prior to the year 1676. (Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society 5). Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society.
- 1 2 Zamponi, Raoul (2024). "Unclassified languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America. De Gruyter. pp. 1627–1648. doi:10.1515/9783110712742-061. ISBN 978-3-11-071274-2.
- ↑ Campbell, Lyle (2024-06-25), "Unclassified and Spurious Languages", The Indigenous Languages of the Americas (1 ed.), Oxford University PressNew York, pp. 280–338, doi:10.1093/oso/9780197673461.003.0005, ISBN 978-0-19-767346-1, retrieved 2025-03-10