The Yuchi Language Primer; a Brief, Introductory Grammar

Woktela for Yuchi.org 9/2007

The Yuchi Language has no alphabet or syllabary for its explicit orthography. In the 1970s James
Crawford and Addie George worked out a phonetic transliteration, and it has been honed and polished
by Yuchi speakers and linguists, Mary Linn et al, into a suitable written system in the last decade of the
Twentieth Century. A simplistic version is used here. While it is entirely late in getting started, an
effort to both study the language and to teach and perserve it has been begun just as the last of the
fluent speakers could contribute. There are only a couple elderly, fluent speakers remaining at present,
but a number of young people are hard at learning the language. While it may survive its brush with
extinction for now, it certainly has lost some of its vibrance in its near demise.

The Yuchi Language is a little bit daunting and has a reputation of being difficult to learn. This is in
part due to the 49 phonetic sounds -- 38 Consonant sounds and 11 vowel sounds. This is twice the
number of most other Indigenous languages from the Southeast. By comparison though English has 44
(24 Consonants and 20 vowels) sounds. About half the consonants are sounded essentially the same as
in English, but some of the remaining ones require a good ear and more than a little practice to master.
More than a few have failed to hear the phonal difference that make one word into quite different
word. Early reports often reputed Yuchi to be tonal, or because of many glottal stops, that it involved
clucking of clicks. In reality it just contains a number of quite different consonants from those that
non-Yuchi speakers are accustomed.

The language more than has gender -- in fact it is very nearly two different languages -- a men’s speech
and a women’s speech. The way something is said in these two variations is often quite different.
Further, Yuchean not only has tenses, but it varies its structure according to whether a Yuchi is talking
or a non-Yuchi is talking, preserving contexts of time and circumstance. All these variations can add a
number of complicating layers to the grammar and the effort needed to master it.

Basically the language is morpheme agglomerative, with words composed of an assemblage of

morphemes strung together to make new words. Morpheme modifiers are generally appended as
suffixes, and its word order is subject-object-verb. The word for Dinosaur or Great Lizard, which is a
part of the ancient mythic creatures in Yuchi stories and ceremonies, is made up of the morphemes for
“lizard,” “face,” “orifice,” “red,” and “big” (sothl’an ahsh’ee chahthlah’a) in that order. Prefixes and
Suffixes are also often added to the stems and root morphemes. One common prefix alerts one to the
word being in the nature of (or having to do with) man/human/being by starting with the morpheme
go/co (ko)-- as in Coweta (man-hawk) and Catawba (men-strong). Another is the prefix “tso” (cho)
which means “Sun” or “sacred” as in tsotici (medicine = sacred-power-soup) or Echota (tobacco-
sacred-fire). Suffixes include “waneo” with the meaning of spirit/dream/shadow (Shawano -- snake-
spirit), and “fa” for direction or locative (fafa -West). While this is straight forward enough, the
morphemes are often contracted, and phoneme transitions occur making it a bit more difficult at times.

One of the many mysteries involving the Yuchean is the “Isolate” nature of the language. How does a
language remain an isolate without any physical barriers to protect it from encroaching influence?
Three things have contributed to this being a lasting language isolate. First the staunch pride and
traditionalism of the Yuchi people who have guarded and protected the language in a way the French
would envy. The language has not changed appreciably in the several hundred years that word lists
have been collected. There are very few words borrowed into the Yuchi Language, while more than a
few have been borrowed from it into neighboring languages. Second, the language is just difficult
enough that it was not learned by outsiders, and thus has remained rather pure. If it is related to any
other Indigenous language, it is suitably distant as to not show any great affinity. This can only mean it
has been separate for quite long time. Third, the Yuchi language served as a repository for the
ceremonialism of the Great Medicine Society, and like Latin became institutionalized by that use.
 Woktela for Yuchi.org 9/2007
The fact that the neighboring tribes did not speak any Yuchean was more than a little incentive for the
Yuchi to become multilingual, and being frequently involved in trade they thus often served as
interpreters from the earliest times. One can see this particularly in the word for “interpreter/
translator” (yatik’e), as it has been borrowed by many of the Southeastern tribes from the Yuchean. It
is clear from the scattered Yuchean names around the Southeast that the Yuchi were far more
influential than has been accorded to them in most written histories. From the Atlantic coast where
they left names like Tybee Island (dabi - Salt) where they built saltpans and traded in salt, to Yazoo
Mississippi where the name derives from “yazu“ (leaf), and northward into Tennessee where a
number of names as well as recorded history documents their presence. As their oral history states the
Yuchi were a major player in the Moundbuilding Culture before the culture collapsed from exposure
to European diseases. They left a clear imprint of their central involvement in this first or pre-
Columbian “United States of America.”

Well into the Twentieth Century most Yuchi remained bilingual, and many were trilingual. The real
threat to the language was a one-two punch of oppressive boarding school policy, and community
dissolution in the War effort of the 1940s. The first created a generation forced to use English as their
primary language, and the second dispersed the community so widely that many could not regularly
converse in Yuchean. It is the dedicated work of a few dozen fluent speakers that has kept the
language alive, even though at the brink of extinction.

In language resides the very heart of a people -- if you would know the people, you must learn the
language. The persistence of the Yuchi language is a testament to the tenaciousness of the Yuchi
people and their culture. They have survived despite all forces directed to extinguish them. While
most other Indigenous peoples have accommodated and acculturated or given up, The Yuchi have
endured far more than most other peoples, and still managed to hold on to most of what makes them
a distinct and unique people. The Yuchean Language is certainly very unique, as are the people who
have used and continue to use it for communication.

Yuchean Lesson 1; A Beginning Vocabulary

Vocabulary is of little use without an understanding of the whole fabric of the language -- but it is the
usual place to start. Pronunciations, here, are approximations only. Let us first start with a greeting:
Sahn Gah Ley with the literal meaning of good morning, but used as a general greeting/hello.

Sa la k’adita again with the broad meaning of both “Thank you/You are welcome.”

go we te ne instruction ya zu leaf s’a earth/land

k’aso ta ne school yu da pipe (smoking) tso sun
k’aso ta teach ya tik’e interpreter sha fa moon
k’a so so book go ga sha trickster/jokester hob’o sky
tsho le home tci di hatchet ge wan o spirit
k’a la hi ti name ta le story ho da wind
tso bi la promise/just sa ta lizard go da fa North
k’ati friend we ta hawk aga fa East
ta ne brother da ke ga le disrespectful wa fa South
wa ne/wat ne sister dae cedar fa’fa West
da bi salt fa dae snakebutton root wi ch ta Winter
tse water we hi feather hi na wa de le Spring
ii tobacco k’ago’a ne number/count wa de Summer
ya ti fire k’ago ta ne food ya ch ti le Fall
pah doh night/dark The pronunciations here are approximate,
ah gah day as one must really hear the sounds, tso, tci,
goct tee neh dance etc. and learn where the various portions of
your vocal track need to be in order to
make the proper sounds. Many people
Yuchi Colors: require assistance to hear them, and
Red — tcala or tza-la guidance to adjust their vocal track to make
the proper sounds. Glottal stops are
White — yash-kah represented by an apostrophe (‘). A glottal
stop is used in English to say “Oh’Oh”
Black — ish-pi or ees-pee (also dirty)
when we make an error. The vowel sounds
Gray — ee’ sh’ee include both oral and nasal vowels, but that
distinction has not been delineated here.
Blue — hi-tzo or hee-tzo (also green and purple)
In Yuchean there is little distinction
Yellow — ti or ttee (also brown & orange) between verbs and nouns, so the same
Silver — s’a fifi yaxka ( literally: earth-shiney-white) word for “number” or “count” might be use
as either a verb or a noun. The stress is on
Gold — s’a fifi ttee (earth-shiney-yellow) the context of who is doing the speaking
and when. While the stories can be told in
English, and have the same characters
interacting and doing the same actions,
Yuchi Numbers 0-13 & 20: something is lost in the translation which is
nagõtehn (nah got neh) none/zero some how enriched with this
contextualized telling in Yuchi.
hit’é (heet’e) one (or only)
The writer here is not a linguist, but has
nõwe (no wen) two relied heavily on the unpublished work of
Lewis Ballard, James Crawford, and Addie
nõKá (no kah) three George to write this little primer on the
Talá (tae lae) four Yuchi language. The unpublished thesis (A
Euchee Grammar) by Mary Linn (2000) is
tc’wahé (tch wa he) five also an excellent source, as will her
forthcoming dictionary of the Yuchi
icdú (ish tu) six language when it is completed.
laxdjú (lahsh ju) seven

bifá (bee fah) eight

t’eKa (t’aekae) nine

laxPé (thlahsh peh) ten

laxPé hit’é tah weh eleven

laxPé nõwe tah weh twelve

laxPé nõKá tah weh thirteen ... shagokwono Tie-Snake Gorget Engraving

k’hoshtahnonweh twenty Woktela for Yuchi.org 9/2007