Talk:Muscogee language

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 6 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Inayasingh.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This entry is really incomplete without some discussion of the relationship of the Creek language to other American Indian languages. I don't know much about the subject, but had looked up this entry with that specific interest in mind. Hope someone with a little expertise can post something useful. Ftjrwrites (talk) 21:40, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article intro does refer to the Muscogean_languages article which gives information on this subject, and the sidebar shows the genetic relationship also. The article text might expand on this a little, saying it is part of the Muscogean family, "along with...". - anon IP

in this article it is claimed that "I" makes a "ɛj" sound in this language. I believe whoever wrote this means "eɪ", as diphthongs rarely end in approximants, and "eɪ" is a much more common sound. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.158.134.45 (talk) 13:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In fact the current linguistic fashion of ending diphthongs in [ɪ] or [ʊ] is what is phonetically strange. Try exactly pronouncing [aʊ], with the "u" of "put" -- it's nothing like the English diphthong in "out". Phonemically, for Muscogee diphthongs the notation /ei/, /oi/, /au/, /iu/ is probably most appropriate, as these are the symbols used for the (non-reduced) Muscogee Short Vowels. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.180.2.31 (talk) 03:58, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One way or another, currently it's not obvious what combination of phonemes this spelling represents. 89.64.70.52 (talk) 11:34, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since the tribe's article has long since been changed to Muscogee people, can this article be changed to Muscogee language? It's much closer to the tribe's name for their language, Mvskoke, and closer to the ethnologue entry for the language, Muskogee. And it is still disambiguated from the language family, Muskogean languages. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:43, 23 April 2012 (UTC)Uyvsdi[reply]

It's been a week with no objections, so I'll go ahead and make the move. -Uyvsdi (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2012 (UTC)Uyvsdi[reply]

In general Wikipedia articles should be titled with the most standard name for something in use in publications for general readers, or arguably in scientific publications -- not what is, or an editor decides is, the most logical, modern, politically correct, etc. (In all cases any variants of a name/term in use should be given as alternates in the article text. If they are very common alternates they should be given immediately after the most standard form at the start of the article. If less common alternates they can be mentioned somewhere later in the intro, or in an etymology section.)

The traditional English spelling is probably Muscogee (with C), but whether the language was called that rather than Creek is uncertain. I'm finding both the Oxford American English Dictionary and Ethnologue use Muskogee (with K), but in the Muskogean_languages article all three linguist's systems (Haas, Munro, Kimball) have it as Creek-Seminole.

I would recommend having "Creek language", "Muscogee language", and "Muskogee language" all refer to an article called "Creek-Seminole language". The current Seminole_language article is correct (describes two Seminole languages, with links).

It looks to me like the vowel phoneme system is represented in spelling like this:

/ɑ/ = letter a — possibly with allophonic variant of [ə] (spelled v)

/ɑː/ = letter a — not distinguished from Short A in writing

/i/ = letter e — rendered as [ɪ]

/i:/ = letter ē

/o/ = letter u — dialectical or allophonic variation as [ʊ ~ o]

/o:/ = letter o — dialectical or allophonic variation as [oː ~ ʊ ~ o]

POSSIBLE SCHWA PHONEME

/ə/ = letter v — dialectical or allophonic variation as [ə ~ a], may only be allophonic variant of phoneme /a/

DIPHTHONGS

/ei/ = letter i — perhaps historically from /ai/ as there is no phonemic /e/

/oi/ = letters ue

/ɑu/ = letters vo — showing the spelling v to represent a reduced /a/, dialectical or allophonic variation as [au ~ əu]

/iu/ = letters eu

NOTES:

• no schwa (letter v) appears in the vowel phoneme chart currently; is it an independent phoneme, or an allophone of short /a/?

• if letter e always represents [ɪ] not [i], the former could be used as the phonemic symbol (although the current /i/ is more symmetrical with the other symbols)

• many linguists mistakenly believe that a diphthong must behave like an English diphthong, with one of the elements reduced to a "glide"; in fact a diphthong is simply any two vowels in series without a syllable break between them

I don't have a source to cite, but some of the unusual Muscogee alphabet spellings, rather than being "vastly different from those in English" (current article prose), probably represent historical/regional English spellings and orthography:

• single e as [ɪ] : this is the U.S. Southern pronunciation of "get" as "git"

• letter i as [ɛj] : this is a transitional phase in the Great English Vowel Shift from /i:/ to /ai/, still heard today in Celtic dialects of the British Isles; alternately today's Muscogean [ɛj] pronunciation may be a development from, or dialectical variation of, an actual 19th century [ai]

• letter v as [ə] : this is derived from old-fashioned writing in which u/v were interchangeable letter shapes, being chosen based on the reduced-U sound in English "up"

The letter c is indeed being reassigned as an "unused" English letter, but the sound assigned to it is perhaps not coincidentally one used in older German spelling (before front vowels, e.g. Cigarette/Zigarette), and in some Eastern European spelling systems.

The letter r as [ɬ] is the only total innovation, and a logical one given the similar mouth position to /r/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.180.2.31 (talk) 04:15, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It did not last long, but Wikipedia had a Muscogee language version have 25-some articles. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias#10.2B_articles There was a Choctaw language version too (15 articles) and it's now closed. Only the Cherokee language version has over 700 articles. The efforts to have Wikipedia versions in Oklahoma's top three Native American languages were difficult, but the versions help strengthen the use of these languages. 71.102.1.95 (talk) 14:21, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's too bad. For these smaller Indigenous-language Wikipedia efforts to succeed, they need to be coordinated with tribal language programs. I'm not sure who set up the Muscogee language Wiki, but if they ever want to restart it, they might contact Gloria MacCarty, Muscogee language teacher at the University of Oklahoma too. The students could possibly contribute articles. -Uyvsdi (talk) 16:14, 23 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi[reply]

I would like to suggest that the following words be hyper-linked to their respective descriptive Wikipedia pages. This would make interpreting the linguistic information and jargon much easier for laypersons visiting this page. It would also make for a much greater convenience.

-Hyper-link velar and uvular under the plosives section

-labiodental and bilabial should be hyper-linked under the fricatives section

-Glottal should be hyper-linked

-Nasal assimilation and nasalizing grade hyper-links under vowels

-Centralization hyper-link under longer vowels

-hyper-link diphthongs

That concludes what I was able to gleam from the article. There very well may be a few more needing addition.

Koeppenf (talk) 04:16, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely—you should go for it! You can create Wikilinks (links to other Wikipedia articles) by clicking the "edit this page tab" then placing the terms you want linked in between double brackets (e.g. [[diphtongs]]), then make sure you describe your actions in the edit summary box (such as "adding links"), click the "show preview" button, make any necesary changes, then click the "save page" button. More information about linking can be found here: WP:LINKSTYLE. -Uyvsdi (talk) 05:18, 23 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 8 external links on Muscogee language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090609052411/http://web.wm.edu/linguistics/creek/about_creek.php to http://web.wm.edu/linguistics/creek/about_creek.php
• Added archive https://archive.is/20140328034006/http://www.news-press.com/article/20140322/ENT13/303230044/Voices-of-the-Everglades-Indian-culture?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1 to http://www.news-press.com/article/20140322/ENT13/303230044/Voices-of-the-Everglades-Indian-culture?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150715074343/http://www.muscogeenation-nsn.gov/Pages/Language/language.html to http://www.muscogeenation-nsn.gov/Pages/Language/language.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110224054236/http://www.ou.edu/anthropology/Programs/Native_Language/creek.html to http://www.ou.edu/anthropology/Programs/Native_Language/creek.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150715090413/http://www.themuscogeecreeknation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=279&Itemid=12 to http://www.themuscogeecreeknation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=279&Itemid=12
• Added archive https://archive.is/20130823224113/http://www.sapulpaheraldonline.com/articles/2013/08/17/news/doc520f9abf0671b330695807.txt to http://www.sapulpaheraldonline.com/articles/2013/08/17/news/doc520f9abf0671b330695807.txt
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100626050128/http://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/papers/vow_reduct.pdf to http://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/papers/vow_reduct.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070609133339/http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/papers/vow_reduct.pdf to http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/papers/vow_reduct.pdf

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I liked this very much — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anayguy (talk • contribs) 20:26, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, this article is well-written. I do not note any spelling/grammar errors and whatever information has been included is informative and well articulated. The lead has a proper table of contents and introduces the topic of the article well, and the article itself follows the table of contents within the lead. However, one suggestion I would make would be to include more information within the article about the Muscogee culture/history of the language and the people, not just information about the language's orthography and phonology. The lead mentions more about the people, which is kind of misleading when most of the article is just about the syntax/grammar structure and overall morphology of the language. Inayasingh (talk) 16:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Phonology section, this should be either [maskógî] or /maskókî/? 89.64.70.52 (talk) 11:33, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Creekstopsign.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:37, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]