Native to United States Ethnicity Apalachee ISO 639-3 xap | Region Florida Extinct early 18th century | |
Language family Muskogean
Eastern
Apalachee | ||
Apalachee was a Muskogean language of Florida. It was closely related to Koasati and Alabama.
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.
Sounds
Consonants
The /f/ can sometimes be pronounced as /ɸ/.
Vowels
The sound /ɪ/ can also be pronounced as /i/, and /o/ can be pronounced as /ʊ/. When the Spanish used their orthography to record the language, it failed to note the vowel distinction.
References
Apalachee language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA