Pawnee language


The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language spoken by some Pawnee Native Americans who now live in north-central Oklahoma. Their traditional historic lands were 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.

Status

Once the language of thousands of Pawnees, today Pawnee is spoken by a shrinking number of elderly speakers. As more young people learn English as their first language, the status of Pawnee declines towards extinction. However, as of 2007, the Pawnee Nation is developing teaching materials for the local high school and for adult language classes. Now, there are extensive documentary materials in the language archived at the American Indian Studies Research Institute. The Pawnee language can be heard spoken in the 2015 movie The Revenant.

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.
BilabialAlveolarVelarGlottal
Stop
Affricate
Rhotic
Fricative
Approximant

Pawnee has four short vowel phonemes and four long counterparts.
FrontBack
High
Mid-low

Morphology

Pawnee is an ergative-absolutive polysynthetic language.

Alphabet

The Pawnee alphabet has 9 consonants and 8 vowels. The letters are relatively similar in pronunciation to their English counterparts.

Consonants

SpellingSound English equivalents
ppoke, cup
ttop, cat
kcool, stuck
c ~ shell, push ~ pants
ssilly, face
hheart, ahead
rcar, ferry
wwacky, away
′The "-" in uh-oh

Vowels

SpellingSound English equivalents
isit
iifeed
ered
eepaid
anut
aafather
uʊbook
uurude