Chitimacha Language
Chitimacha is an extinct language that was historically spoken by the Chitimacha tribe in southern Louisiana. At the time of their first contact with the French in the 1600s, the tribe had around 2,600 members living in multiple villages along Bayou Teche. Over time, French displaced Chitimacha as the primary language, and by the 1930s, only two speakers were reported. Chitimacha is classified as a language isolate, meaning it has no known relatives, though various attempts to connect it with other languages have not gained acceptance.
The language featured a five-vowel system with vowel length distinctions and included unique glottalized consonants. Nouns were generally uninflected, with some exceptions for human reference in plural forms. Its syntactical structure exhibited flexibility, with a basic word order of subject-verb-object and utilized postpositions for indicating relations. The language's verbs included inflections for person and number, as well as tense-aspect. Despite its extinction, the study of Chitimacha has been enriched by the work of various linguists, although documentation remains limited. The language reflects certain shared traits with other languages in the southeastern linguistic region, suggesting historical diffusion of linguistic features.
Subject Terms
Chitimacha Language
Culture area: Southeast
Tribe affected: Chitimacha
Chitimacha is an extinct language that was spoken in southern Louisiana. Although there are a few hundred members of the Chitimacha tribe, with its reservation at Charenton, Louisiana, the language is no longer spoken. The Chitimacha people lived along Bayou Teche at the time of their first encounter with the French in the 1600’s; the tribe was then composed of about twenty-six hundred people, scattered along bayous in several villages. Eventually French replaced their native language, and in the 1930’s, when Morris Swadesh studied the language, there were only two speakers left.
Chitimacha is a language isolate; that is, it has no known relatives. Several attempts have been made to associate it with other languages. For example, John Swanton tried to relate Chitimacha to Tunica and Atakapa as part of the Tunica language, which Edward Sapir placed in his Hokan-Siouan superstock; Mary Haas included Chitimacha in her Gulf proposal and later in her even broader Algonquian-Gulf grouping. None of these relationships, however, has been accepted.
A problematic aspect of Chitimacha is that very little documentation has been published. The language has been studied by a number of noted linguists, including Albert Gatschet as well as Swanton and Swadesh. Swadesh conducted the most extensive study, but most of his research remains unpublished.
Chitimacha had a five-vowel system with a vowel length distinction (similar to Latin). It utilized glottalized consonants—one speaker with whom Swadesh worked used glottalized nasals and glides which the other speaker had lost. Nouns are generally uninflected, except that nouns referring to humans are sometimes marked for plural. Word order is flexible, but the basic order seems to be subject-verb-object, with postpositions (as opposed to prepositions) which express relations such as location, direction, means, and purpose. The verbs are inflected with suffixes for person (first person versus non-first person) and number (singular versus plural) of subject and for tense-aspect. Swadesh, in 1933, also described a set of Chitimacha verbs which are marked as having a derogatory or abusive connotation when applied to humans. Chitimacha shares a number of traits with other, genetically unrelated languages of the southeastern linguistic area, features usually assumed to have been diffused among the languages.