Choctaw language
Muskogean language
The Choctaw language (Choctaw: Chahta), spoken by the Choctaw, an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, US, is a member of the Muskogean language family. Choctaw is a separate but closely related language to Chickasaw.
The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma published the New Choctaw dictionary in 2016.
Dialects
There are three dialects of Choctaw (Mithun 1999):
"Native" Choctaw on the Choctaw Nation in southeastern Oklahoma
Mississippi Choctaw of Oklahoma on Chickasaw Nation of south-central Oklahoma (near Durwood)
Choctaw of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians near Philadelphia, Mississippi
Other speakers live near Tallahassee, Florida, and with the Koasati in Louisiana, and also a few speakers live in Texas and California.
Phonology
More information on suffixes is in the Morphology section.
Consonants
^ The only voiced stop is /b/. The voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ may become partially voiced between vowels, especially /k/ and for male speakers. Also, the voiceless stops are slightly aspirated at the onset of words and before stressed syllables, behaving like English voiceless plosives.
^ Controversially, some analyses suggest that all nouns end in an underlying consonant phoneme. Nouns apparently ending in a vowel actually have a glottal stop /ʔ/ or a glottal fricative /h/ as the final consonant.
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