Cáuijogà
The Kiowa language, spoken by the tribe of the same name, is a Tanoan language spoken across the plains of Southwestern Oklahoma. It is an endangered language, fluently spoken only by a few hundred folks. I have studied the language myself, in Dr. Gus Palmer, Jr's course at the University of Oklahoma, but am not fluent. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to take these courses, and encourage any OU students to study Native languages. They are much more interesting than the European languages everyone else takes. Plus, they fulfill language requirements.
This webpage is not a course in Kiowa. It is merely intended to be a resource for language enthusiasts discovering it for the first time. The information on it comes from what I've learned in Gus's course, or what I've noticed on my own; it is not my intention to copy anyone else's hard work.
My great-grandfather, Parker McKenzie, was a native speaker of Kiowa, and developed an alphabet for it, an example of which tops this page. A biography of him can be found at The Living Centenarians website (Alas, he passed away in 1999 at the age of 101.) He was a self-trained linguist who devoted himself to preserving the language. Other linguists have also turned their attention to Kiowa; some of their works can be found in the bibliography.
Kiowa is a very interesting language for many reasons. One is its pronunciation. Kiowa is a tone language. That is, differences in voice pitch can distinguish two or more different words. This can be fatally important-- for instance, àhô means "Thank you!", while à-hó: means "Kill him!" The only sound difference is that the pitch on "thank you" falls at the end.
Kiowa also has a rich morphology, meaning it has a lot of different forms of words. It is rich enough that sentences do not need any spoken subjects. They can be implied, because the inflections let listeners know what is going on. The "inverse" system of numbering things used in Kiowa and related languages is unique.
Lastly, Kiowa's syntax has a lot to offer. Like most Native languages, neither Kiowa's syntax nor its syntax-semantics interface have been very thoroughly investigated. Kiowa has many interesting properties, including switch-reference, incorporation, and perhaps non-configurationality.
The ultimate goal of this site is to interest you and motivate you to learn more about Kiowa and other Native languages, most of which we have neglected for too long. If you have any comments or questions, don't hesitate to e-mail me. Hàu:!
Pá:dàu:syàn (Little Twin)