Yuchi language
| Yuchi | |
|---|---|
| Euchee | |
| Tsoyaha | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | East central Oklahoma |
| Ethnicity | Yuchi people |
|
Native speakers
|
5 (2012) Nearly extinct; revitalization project |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | yuch1247 |
 |
|
Yuchi (Euchee) is the language of the Yuchi people living in Oklahoma. Historically, they lived in the southeastern United States, including eastern Tennessee, western Carolinas, northern Georgia, and Alabama, in the period of early European colonization. Speakers of the Yuchi language were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in the early 19th century.
Yuchi is classified as a language isolate, because it is not known to be related to any other language. Various linguists have made claims, however, that the language has a distant relationship with the Siouan family: Sapir in 1921 and 1929, Haas in 1951, and 1964, Elmendorf in 1964, Rudus in 1974, and Crawford in 1979.
In 1997, the Euchees United Cultural Historical Educational Efforts (EUCHEE) claimed that there were currently two spoken dialects: the Duck Creek/Polecat and the Bigpond variations.
Yuchi is primarily spoken in the northeastern Oklahoma region. In 1997, 12 to 19 elders spoke the language out of an estimated Yuchi population of 1,500 speakers. In 2009, only five fluent speakers whose first language was not English remained.
Yuchi people were originally native to Tennessee and later Georgia in the southeastern United States. However, speakers of the Yuchi language were forcibly relocated with the Muscogee people to Indian Territory prior to the Trail of Tears.
Because of the language's past of removal and state of being forbidden, there have been several changes which have changed the way the language is spoken. In 1885, Swiss linguist Albert S. Gatschet wrote an article in the publication Science, which indicated various linguistic idiosyncrasies. He claimed that adjectives are not expressed with number, but nouns are with the addition of the particle ha (coming from the original term wahále, meaning many) which made the word essentially plural. He also claimed that the language was no longer in an archaic state due to the lack of a "dual," and that the language had temporal and personal inflection. Gatschet also did lots of field study and documentation regarding the language, many of his original vocabulary lists can be found at the National Anthropological Archives or on their website.
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