Sacred Name Collection

Indigenous languages · recovered texts live

Choctaw — the Choctaw Language

Chahta — the language of the Choctaw people, taught today in the Choctaw nations' own schools, from the tribal classrooms of Mississippi to the Choctaw Nation's School of Choctaw Language in Oklahoma.

Recovered texts are here to read. The people's own curriculum doorway is in preparation — in partnership with the Choctaw nations' own speakers. The goal is the whole collection in Choctaw: every book to read and to hear, here and in the school. Nothing is published until they have guided and reviewed it.

The language

Choctaw — Chahta, as the dictionary on this shelf names it — is the language of the Choctaw speakers of the old Choctaw country: the people of today's Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, among whom Cyrus Byington worked for nearly fifty years. The two nations are named separately wherever they are named, here as in the book.

Both nations teach the language in their own houses today. The Choctaw Nation's Chahta Anumpa Aiikhvna, the School of Choctaw Language, offers classes for all skill levels, free online courses in five levels, and a year-long apprenticeship pairing learners with Chahta speakers for daily instruction. The Mississippi Band's Choctaw Tribal School System teaches Choctaw language and culture through its schools — six elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school — under its own stated purpose: “Choctaw language maintenance and restoration for our Choctaw children,” with certified Choctaw language instructors in its classrooms.

Their own teachers

The Choctaw nations' own schools are the language's houses of teaching. In Oklahoma, the School of Choctaw Language carries classes, a dictionary, a phrasebook, and its apprenticeship; in Mississippi, the Band's Department of Schools carries the language into every tribal school day, taught by its own certified instructors. Learn to speak at their houses, in their spellings.

The writing

The recovered witness below keeps the spelling of Byington's dictionary as its editors printed it in 1915 — with their stated substitutions, ạ for Byington's v, a superscript ⁿ for his underlinings, and ł for hl — and its own Phonetic Key stands entire on the recovered page. The spellings the Choctaw nations' own schools teach today are theirs; the two writings are not to be confused. What is relearned here is read in the old spelling exactly as printed, and learned to speak at the nations' houses.

Recovered reading

One recovered book stands here: A Dictionary of the Choctaw Language (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 46, 1915), by Cyrus Byington, edited by John R. Swanton and Henry S. Halbert — the front matter complete, the Phonetic Key entire, and the first two pages of Choctaw–English entries (printed pp. 3–4), from a through abehma, exactly as printed, with no reading marked [?]. The remaining entries (pp. 5–378) and the editors' English–Choctaw index are not taken; the boundary is the foot of printed page 4. It is the people's own witness, recovered as a historical text — not a Sacred Name edition; the collection's own edition in this language waits for the partnership. Read the front matter, Phonetic Key, and first two pages of entries of Byington's Choctaw Dictionary (1915)

An open invitation

This door stands open by invitation. If you are a speaker, teacher, or language keeper of Choctaw, or you carry its authority, this programme asks to work with you — to be guided, corrected, and reviewed by the people whose language this is. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].

The first doors are the Choctaw Nation's School of Choctaw Language and the Mississippi Band's Choctaw Tribal Schools.

To hear it

When Choctaw opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Choctaw speakers. Until then this door is silent in Choctaw on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.

The other doors

One small advertisement stands at the bottom of this page — never inside the reading text. The words of the book stand more prominent than the advertisement.