The Shawnee language is a Central Algonquian language spoken in parts of central and northeastern Oklahoma by the Shawnee people. It was originally spoken by these people in a broad territory throughout the Eastern United States, mostly north of the Ohio River. They occupied territory in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
Shawnee is closely related to other Algonquian languages, such as Mesquakie-Sauk (Sac and Fox) and Kickapoo. It has 260 speakers, according to a 2015 census, although the number is decreasing. It is a polysynthetic language with rather free word ordering.
Status
Shawnee is severely threatened, as many speakers have shifted to English. The approximately 200 remaining speakers are older adults. Some of the decline in usage of Shawnee is the result of the assimilation program carried out by Indian boarding schools, which abused, starved, and beat children who spoke their native language. This treatment often extended to the family of those children as well.
Of the 4576 members of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe around the city of Shawnee, more than 100 are speakers; of the 3652 members of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe in Ottawa County, only a few elders are speakers; of the 2226 members of the Loyal Shawnee in the Cherokee region of Oklahoma around Whiteoak, there are fewer than 12 speakers. Because of such low figures and the percentage of elderly speakers, Shawnee is classified as an endangered language. Additionally, development outside of the home has been limited. Apart from a dictionary and portions of the Bible translated from 1842 to 1929, there is little literature or technology support for Shawnee.
Language revitalization
Absentee-Shawnee Elder George Blanchard, Sr, former governor of his tribe, teaches classes to Head Start and elementary school children, as well as evening classes for adults, at the Cultural Preservation Center in Seneca, Missouri. His work was profiled on the PBS show American Experience in 2009. The classes are intended to encourage use of Shawnee among families at home. The Eastern Shawnee have also taught language classes.
Conversational Shawnee booklets and CDs, and a Learn Shawnee Language website are available.
Phonology
Vowels
Shawnee has six vowels, three of which are high, and three are low.
In Shawnee, tends to be realized as , and tended to be pronounced .
In (1) and (2), a near minimal pair has been found for Shawnee and . In (3) and (4), a minimal pair has been found for Shawnee and .
(1) 'he was in charge'
(2) 'dog'
(3) 'all this'
(4) 'small'
However, no quantitative contrasts have been found in the vowels and .
Consonants
Shawnee consonants are shown in the chart below.
and contrast in the verbal affixes (which marks third person singular animate objects) and (which marks third person plural animate objects).
The Shawnee is most often derived from Proto-Algonquian *s.
Some speakers of Shawnee pronounce more like an alveolar . This pronunciation is especially common among Loyal Band Shawnee speakers near Vinita, Oklahoma.
// and /h/ are allophones of the same phoneme: // occurs in syllable final position, while occurs at the beginning of a syllable.
Stress
Stress in Shawnee falls on the final syllable (ultima) of a word.
Consonant length
In Shawnee phonology, consonant length is contrastive. Words may not begin with vowels, and between a morpheme ending with a vowel and one starting with a vowel, a is inserted. Shawnee does not allow word-final consonants and long vowels. and contrast in the following verbal affixes
These affixes (, ) are object markers in the transitive animate subordinate mode. The subject is understood.
[h] Insertion
∅→[h]/#V
A word may not begin with a vowel. Instead, an on-glide is added. For example: There are two variants of the article , meaning 'from'. It can attach to nouns to form prepositional phrases, or it can also be a preverb. When it attaches to a noun, it is , and when attached to a preverb it is .
/y/ Insertion
∅→[y]/V(:)_ V(:)
When one of the vowels is long, Shawnee allows for the insertion of .
Word-final Consonant Deletion
C# → 0
A consonant is deleted at the end of a word.
In (a), a noun ends in a consonant when a locative suffix follows, but in (b), the consonant is deleted at word end.
Word-final Vowel Shortening
V:# → V#
A long vowel is shortened at the end of a word.