| Cheyenne | |
| Nativename: | Cheyenne: Tsėhesenėstsestȯtse |
| States: | United States |
| Region: | Montana and Oklahoma |
| Ethnicity: | Cheyenne |
| Speakers: | 380 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| Ref: | e21 |
| Familycolor: | Algic |
| Fam1: | Algic |
| Fam2: | Algonquian |
| Iso2: | chy |
| Iso3: | chy |
| Glotto: | chey1247 |
| Glottorefname: | Cheyenne |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Map: | Cheyenne USC2000 PHS.svg |
| Map2: | Lang Status 60-DE.svg |
The Cheyenne language (Cheyenne: Tsėhesenėstsestȯtse, pronounced as /chy/) (informal spelling Cheyenne: Tsisinstsistots), is the Native American language spoken by the Cheyenne people, predominantly in present-day Montana and Oklahoma, in the United States. It is part of the Algonquian language family. Like all other Algonquian languages, it has complex agglutinative polysynthetic morphology. This language is considered endangered, at different levels, in both states.
Cheyenne is one of the Algonquian languages, which is a sub-category of the Algic languages. Specifically, it is a Plains Algonquian language. However, Plains Algonquian, which also includes Arapaho and Blackfoot, is an areal rather than genetic subgrouping.
Cheyenne is spoken on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana and in Oklahoma. On the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in March 2013 there were approximately 10,050 enrolled tribal members, of which about 4,939 resided on the reservation; slightly more than a quarter of the population five years or older spoke a language other than English.[1]
The Cheyenne language is considered "definitely endangered" in Montana and "critically endangered" in Oklahoma by the UNESCO. In Montana the number of speakers were about 1700 in 2012 according to the UNESCO. In 2021 there were approximately 300 elderly speakers. In 2021 in Oklahoma there were fewer than 20 elderly speakers. There is no current information on any other state in the United States regarding the Cheyenne language.[2]
The 2017 film Hostiles features extensive dialogue in Northern Cheyenne. The film's producers hired experts in the language and culture to ensure authenticity.[3]
In 1997, the Cultural Affairs Department of Chief Dull Knife College applied to the Administration for Native Americans for an approximately $50,000 language preservation planning grant. The department wanted to use this money to assess the degree to which Cheyenne was being spoken on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Following this, the department wanted to use the compiled data to establish long-term community language goals, and to prepare Chief Dull Knife College to implement a Cheyenne Language Center and curriculum guide.[4] In 2015, the Chief Dull Knife College sponsored the 18th Annual Language Immersion Camp. This event was organized into two weeklong sessions, and its aim was to educate the younger generation on their ancestral language. The first session focused on educating 5–10-year-olds, while the second session focused on 11- to 18-year-olds. Certified Cheyenne language instructors taught daily classes. Ultimately, the camp provided approximately ten temporary jobs for fluent speakers on the impoverished reservation. The state of Montana has passed a law that guarantees support for tribal language preservation for Montana tribes.[5] Classes in the Cheyenne language are available at Chief Dull Knife College in Lame Deer, Montana, at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, and at Watonga High School in Watonga, Oklahoma.There are also holistic approaches to language revitalization taken upon by the Cheyenne people to try and keep their language vital. This is done by recognizing the integrated nature of the Cheyenne language with games, crafts, and ceremony which are integrated in youth and community programs.[6] The language is very often not being taught in the home so instead of just teaching grammar as a revitalization effort, holistic approaches attract more attention from new speakers and educate the new generation and counter language and culture loss.
Cheyenne has three basic vowel qualities pronounced as //e a o//. The phoneme called pronounced as //e// here is usually pronounced as a phonetic pronounced as /[ɪ]/, and sometimes varies to pronounced as /[ɛ]/.
These vowel qualities take four tones: high tone as in Cheyenne: á pronounced as /[á]/); low tone as in Cheyenne: a pronounced as /[à]/; mid tone as in Cheyenne: ā pronounced as /[ā]/; and rising tone as in Cheyenne: ô pronounced as /[ǒ]/. Tones are often not represented in the orthography. Vowels can also be voiceless (e.g. Cheyenne: ė pronounced as /[e̥]/).[7] The high and low tones are phonemic, while voiceless vowels' occurrence is determined by the phonetic context, making them allophones of the voiced vowels.
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| Low | pronounced as /ink/ |
| Bilabial | Dental | Post- alveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Plosive | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | (pronounced as /ink/) | pronounced as /ink/ |
The Cheyenne orthography of 14 letters is neither a pure phonemic system nor a phonetic transcription; it is, in the words of linguist Wayne Leman, a "pronunciation orthography". In other words, it is a practical spelling system designed to facilitate proper pronunciation. Some allophonic variants, such as voiceless vowels, are shown. (e) represents the phoneme symbolized pronounced as //e//, and (š) represents pronounced as //ʃ//.
Low tone is usually unmarked.[8]
The systematic phonemes of Cheyenne are distinguished by seven two-valued features. Scholar Donald G. Frantz defined these features as follows:
| ʔ | h | a | o | e | m | n | p | k | t | b | s | š | x | ||
| oral | − | (+) | (+) | (+) | (+) | (+) | (+) | + | + | + | (+) | (+) | (+) | (+) | |
| voc | (−) | + | (+) | (+) | (+) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | − | − | − | − | |
| syl | (−) | − | + | + | + | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | |
| clos | (+) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | (+) | (+) | + | + | + | − | − | − | − | |
| nas | 0 | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | + | + | − | (−) | − | (−) | (−) | (−) | (−) | |
| grv | 0 | − | + | (−) | + | − | + | + | − | + | − | − | + | ||
| dif | 0 | − | − | + | + | (+) | + | − | (+) | + | + | − | − |
0 indicates the value is indeterminable/irrelevant. A blank indicates the value is specifiable, but context is required (even though any value could be inserted because the post-cyclical rules would change the value to the correct one). Parentheses enclose values that are redundant according to the phonological rules; these values simply represent the results of these rules.
Cheyenne has 14 orthographic letters representing 13 phonemes. pronounced as /[x]/ is written as orthographically but is not a phoneme. This count excludes the results of allophonic devoicing, which are spelled with a dot over vowels. Devoicing naturally occurs in the last vowel of a word or phrase but can also occur in vowels at the penultimate and prepenultimate positions within a word. Non-high pronounced as /[a]/ and pronounced as /[o]/ is also usually devoiced preceding h followed by a stop. Phonemic pronounced as //h// is absorbed by a preceding voiceless vowel. Examples are given below.
Devoicing occurs when certain vowels directly precede the consonants pronounced as /[t]/, pronounced as /[s]/, pronounced as /[ʃ]/, pronounced as /[k]/, or pronounced as /[x]/ followed by an pronounced as /[e]/. The rule is linked to the rule of e-epenthesis, which states simply that [e] appears in the environment of a consonant and a word boundary.
A vowel that does not have a high pitch is devoiced if it is followed by a voiceless fricative and not preceded by pronounced as /[h]/.
Non-high pronounced as /[a]/ and pronounced as /[o]/ become at least partially devoiced when they are preceded by a voiced vowel and followed by an pronounced as /[h]/, a consonant, and two or more syllables.
pronounced as /[ɪmaṅɪ]/ 'He is drinking.'
Before a voiceless segment, a consonant is devoiced.
The pronounced as /[h]/ is absorbed if it is preceded or followed by voiceless vowels.
There are several rules that govern pitch use in Cheyenne. Pitch can be ˊ = high, unmarked = low, ˉ = mid, and ˆ = raised high. According to linguist Wayne Leman, some research shows that Cheyenne may have a stress system independent from that of pitch. If this is the case, the stress system's role is very minor in Cheyenne prosody. It would have no grammatical or lexical function, unlike pitch.
A high pitch becomes a raised high when it is not preceded by another high vowel and precedes an underlying word-final high.