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Yuchean as a Tool of Understanding Indigenous Southeastern Culture
The Yuchi language has a number of unusual and interesting features that should interest many besides linguists. First, Yuchean is a language isolate, which means it is unrelated to other known Indian languages. In the case of Yuchean this lack of evolution from or with other languages is rather profound and absolute. A few have suggested very distant Siouian influences, but these remain sketchy and unconvincing to most. Further the language has remained isolated from the many neighboring languages despite very intimate contact with these peoples for many centuries. Most isolates form because the speakers are physically isolated, and evidence does point at the Yuchi spending some time island-hopping the Caribbean. But they have spent much time in intimate contact with other languages as well. This is rather unique among languages, and can only be explained by the staunch Yuchi pride and traditionalism, which has kept the language very pristine. The Yuchi have been more protective of their language than the French are of theirs, actively eshewing foreign words for many centuries. This has left the Yuchean language nearly devoid of any borrowed words or structure.
Because the Yuchi neither taught outsiders to speak Yuchean, nor permitted non-Yuchi words to be incorporated into Yuchean, it remains among the most pristine languages, and has not change appreciablly for many centuries. The opposite is not true, as a number of important terms have been borrowed out of the Yuchean, demonstrating that the Yuchi were at the very heart of the protohistoric culture in the Southeast region in both trade and religious focii.
Second, Yuchean is an agglomerative language (like German) wherein words are assembled by stringing morphemes of meaning together. Thus a word like "dinosaur" is composed of the morphemes for "lizard" (sot'a), "mouth" (dax'i), "red" (chata), "big" ('a). This makes etymology of words straight forward because in addition to the meaning, the origins of the word are fairly easily traced by these morphemes as well. It also makes the language very adapative to creating new words such as "car" (k'as'athecaha -- "thing, run, fast"), "radio" (t'ostanewedine -- "box, talking") and "telephone" (se te'wedine -- "wire, iron, on, talking"), eliminating the need to borrow such words into the language. These morphemes might have several orderings within a word, but often start with the most important "noun." These often become rather noteworthy prefix/suffix morphemes across the language as in the following list. It is this feature that makes it so useful for tracking word genealogies among languages.
Categorical Element Designation by Morphemes
Certain syllabic prefix/suffix terms (morphemes) are used to set a stage for the word, i.e. a prefix of S'a denotes that the term refers to something pertaining to the earth or land. Go (Co) refers to something pertaining to humans or the human condition. Tso refers to something dedicated to the sun or sacred. A suffix of ha denotes a plural inanimate or group of people. Others morphemes include:
Morpheme: Meaning:
S'a..............................earth
Go (Co).......................humans/ human condition (Yuchi inclusive only)
tti................................stone or metal
Tso..............................Sun or sacred
Ya (-x,s)......................tree/wood
Ya or Da/Ba................fire
Yu...............................noteworthiness/ significance
--Waneo......................spirit / dream / shadow
Ha...............................tribe / clan -- groups of people and plural inanimate
Fa...............................directional
Da...............................wind
Tse..............................water
Ha!.............................breath
K'................................thing or action
Xu...............................fish
Wak............................interrogative, as well as suffix: -le
--'a..............................big
--s'i.............................small
-ne or -ke.....................place (here)
© 2010 David Hackett (Woktela)
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