Apalachee language

Apalachee was a Muskogean language of Florida. It was closely related to Koasati and Alabama.[1]

Apalachee
Native to	United States
Region	Florida
Ethnicity	Apalachee
Extinct	early 18th century
Language family	Muskogean Eastern Apalachee
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xap
Linguist List	xap
Glottolog	apal1237

The language is known primarily from one document, a letter written in 1688 to Charles II of Spain. Geoffrey Kimball has produced a grammatical sketch (Kimball 1987) and a vocabulary of the language (Kimball 1988) based on the contents of the letter.

Haas (1949) showed that Apalachee belonged to the same branch of the Muskogean family as Koasati, Alabama, and Hitchiti.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Lateral	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	plain	p /p/	t /t/		ch /tʃ/	c, g /k/
	voiced	b /b/
Fricative		f /f/	s /s/	lz /ɬ/			h /h/
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/
Approximant		gu, w /w/		l /l/	y /j/

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/
Close-mid			o /o/
Open		a /a/

Vowels may also be elongated.

Bibliography

• Haas, M. R. (1949). The position of Apalachee in the Muskogean family. International Journal of American Linguistics, 15(2), 121-127.
• Kimball, G. (1987). A grammatical sketch of Apalachee. International journal of American linguistics, 53(2), 136-174.
• Kimball, G. (1988). An Apalachee vocabulary. International Journal of American Linguistics, 54(4), 387-398.

References

1. Broadwell 1992, pp. 3; 41-2, fn. 2

External links

• Apalachee Language Guide