Native to United States ISO 639-3 kii | Extinct 1930s Glottolog kits1249 | |
Region previously west-central Oklahoma and eastern Texas Language family Caddoan
Northern
Pawnee–Kitsai
Kitsai | ||
The Kitsai (also Kichai) language is an extinct member of the Caddoan language family. It was spoken in Oklahoma by the Kichai tribe and became extinct in the 1930s. It is thought to be most closely related to Pawnee. The Kichai people today are enrolled in the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (Wichita, Keechi), Waco and Tawakonie), headquartered in Anadarko, Oklahoma.
Contents
Documentation
Kitsai is documented in the still mostly-unpublished field notes of anthropologist Alexander Lesser, of Hofstra University. Lesser discovered five speakers of Kitsai in 1928-9 – none of whom spoke English – but working through Wichita/English bilingual translators, he filled 41 notebooks with Kitsai material.
Kai Kai was the last fluent speaker of Kitsai. She was born around 1849 and lived eight miles north of Anadarko. Kai Kai worked with Lesser to record vocabulary and oral history and prepare a grammar of the language.
In the 1960s, Lesser shared his materials with Salvador Bucca of the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, and they published scholarly articles on Kitsai.
Vocabulary
Some Kitsai words include the following: