Extinct indigenous language of Mississippi and Louisiana
Natchez
Na·šceh
Native to
United States
Region
Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma
Ethnicity
Natchez people
Extinct
1957 with the death of Nancy Raven
Revival
6 (2011)[1]
Language family
Language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-3
ncz
Glottolog
natc1249
ELP
Natchez
Precontact distribution of the Natchez language
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The Natchez language is the ancestral language of the Natchez people who historically inhabited Mississippi and Louisiana, and who now mostly live among the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples in Oklahoma. The language is considered to be either unrelated to other indigenous languages of the Americas or distantly related to the Muskogean languages.
The phonology of Natchez is atypical in having voicing distinction in its sonorants but not in its obstruents; it also has a wide range of morphophonemic processes. Morphologically, it has complex verbal inflection and a relatively simple nominal inflection (the ergative case marks nouns in transitive clauses), and its syntax is characterized by active-stative alignment and subject-object-verb word order (or more accurately Agent-Object-Verb and Subject-Verb). Natchez storytellers used a specific register, "cannibal speech" to impersonate cannibals, a recurring character in Natchez oral literature.
The Natchez chiefdom was destroyed in the 1730s by the French; Natchez speakers took refuge among their neighbors and accompanied them when the U.S. federal government forcibly removed them to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) on the Trail of Tears. That meant that Natchez speakers were frequently multilingual in Muscogee, Cherokee, Natchez, and English. The language gradually became endangered, and it is now generally considered extinct in spite of recent revitalization efforts. Much of what is known of the language comes mostly from its last fluent speakers, Watt Sam and Nancy Raven, who worked with linguist Mary R. Haas in the 1930s.
The Natchez nation is now working to revive it as a spoken language. As of 2011, field linguists from the community were being trained in documentation techniques, and six members of the Natchez tribe in Oklahoma now speak the language, out of about 10,000.[2]
^Natchez language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^Smith, Diane (2011-06-15). "University helps Native Americans save languages: Project aims to increase field linguists". Seattle Times Newspaper. Retrieved 2013-06-02.
The Natchezlanguage is the ancestral language of the Natchez people who historically inhabited Mississippi and Louisiana, and who now mostly live among...
Mississippi Valley, near the present-day city of Natchez, Mississippi, in the United States. They spoke a language with no known close relatives, although it...
Alabama. Though poorly documented, it was probably a dialect of the Natchezlanguage. It was also the subject of controversy beginning in 1880–1882, when...
Natchez may refer to: Natchez, Alabama, United States Natchez, Indiana, United States Natchez, Louisiana, United States Natchez, Mississippi, a city in...
spoke an Ohio Valley Siouan language. The bearers of the Plaquemine culture were presumably speakers of the Natchezlanguage isolate. The first written...
Tensaw and Tensaw River - Etymology is unclear. May be related to the Natchez teansa. Tibbie - a shortened form of the Choctaw word "oakibbeha". Oakibbeha...
as Nancy Taylor, was a Natchez storyteller from Braggs, Oklahoma and one of the last two native speakers of the Natchezlanguage. Her father was Cherokee...
Gulf languages are a proposed family of native North American languages composed of the Muskogean languages, along with four language isolates: Natchez, Tunica...
The Natchez revolt, or the Natchez massacre, was an attack by the Natchez Native American people on French colonists near present-day Natchez, Mississippi...
Indigenous languages Indigenous languages European language dialects Pidgin languages Indigenous languages Creole languages Indigenous languages Indigenous...
1944) was a Natchez storyteller and cultural historian of Braggs, Oklahoma and one of the two last native speakers of the Natchezlanguage. Around 1907...
the Natchezlanguage–speaking Taensa, whom the French called the grand Taensas. The Avoyel language may have been related to the Natchezlanguage. Described...
worked there until the outbreak of the Natchez revolt in 1729. At that time, the Yazoo and Koroa joined with the Natchez in attacking the French colonists...
Muskogean scholars continue to believe that Muskogean is related to Natchez. Most family languages display lexical accent on nouns and grammatical case, which...
described the Taensa language as being nearly identical with the Natchezlanguage; the missionaries were learning the latter language in their efforts to...
The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English (specifically, American English)...
1941, in Natchez, Mississippi. His mother, Ella Mae Jones, was born in Canton, Mississippi. His father, Charlie R Jones, born in Natchez, was a traveling...
currency of Brazil from 1986 to 1989 (symbol: NCz or NCz$) Natchezlanguage, an indigenous language spoken in parts of the south eastern United States (ISO...
Grand Village of the Natchez (22 AD 501), also known as the Fatherland Site, is a 128.1-acre (0.518 km2) site encompassing a prehistoric indigenous village...
Consciously devised language Endangered language – Language that is at risk of going extinct Ethnologue#Language families Extinct language – Language that no longer...
fought with the Natchez (Native American people who lived in the Natchez Bluffs) over control of the land near modern-day Natchez for their agriculture...
for language code: tvy". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2015. "Catawba". Ethnologue. "Omurano". Ethnologue. "Natchez". Ethnologue...
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