#chitimacha

This is your reminder that, I am an afro-indian and indigenous creator! I'm Mr. Laveau, an audio RP VA who is Caribbean and Kalinago!

My channel + stories are filled with Indigenous characters, lemme show them off to you!

Nikolas Ortiz is Chinese, Latino & Mexica while Julio Vela is Afro-latino & Mexica!

Nikolas was inspired by Quetzelcoatl and Julio was inspired by Tepeyollotl! Nikolas is a powerful daemon who's just moved to California to attend a magical college but finds that making friends and being a good boyfriend are easier said than done while figuring out how to be social again! Julio is one of his newly made friends who helps him settle.

Joseph Hunt, Trevor & Bull are all of the Navajo Nation!

Joseph was inspired by Odin while Trevor and Bull are inspired by Huginn and Muninn as well the navajo myth of the hero twins, Nayenesgani the slayer (Trevor who was named after Trevor Belmont) and Water (Bull, named after the Bull river). They're all headed to Washington to investigate the disappearance of the MC's brother, but the twins are looking for their father who they think might be around there too!

Percy and Aman are Caribbean and Afro-indigenous, Aman is Black & Taino, Percy is Black & Kalinago!

Percy was based on the Kalinago's connection to the ocean as sea-farers, and Aman is based on Huracan, the taino god of wind and Aeolus! Their story centres on the idea of lost opportunities, grief, lonliness and the consequence of colonization in the Caribbean!

Ezra is Latino & Maya, Jackson is Afro-Inuit and Zee is Afro-arapaho!

Ezra is based on the mayan god, Ek Chuah and owls (which is like funny because owls are associated with witches and she's a witch)! Ezra is the head of her own coven that is stationed in Appalachia, but is moving to expand their operations in Chicago and keep an eye on his parnter!

Jackson is based on the Akhlut, a shapeshifting spirit that can take the forms of both a wolf and an orca. He is an alpha forced into the positon after his predecessor was framed for a murder they did not commit. As of now, he's currently trying to manage the disappearance of his pack members that goes unnoticed

Zee is an eagle shifter whose concept is based on the thunderbird! She made her debut killing a magical cop, and is a spy for an anarchist group looking to fight their government's tyranical hold over magical people.

Jericho Boucharde is Black & Chitimacha, and Aranck is Cree!

Aranck's character was made around the concept of the Cree writing system, hence he was designed as a Wizard! He is venturing out to prove himself as a mage and make his people's language academically recognised within his world due to the dissonance between human cultures.

Jericho is based on a creature who-I-cannot-name (hint:W) and Gargoyles! Jericho is the obsessive ex-lover of one of the listeners within Blood Moon! After being isolated for most of his life, he became a vampire to find community only to descend into monstrosity.

Chitimacha is a Native American language of Louisiana that was spoken until the death of its last two native speakers, Ben (1934) & Delphine (1940), pictured here.

Thankfully, a linguist named Morris Swadesh (pictured) worked with Ben & Delphine to write down 120 Chitimacha stories and create a basic dictionary before they died.

Today, the Chitimacha tribe is revitalizing their language using those archival materials. They’ve created Rosetta Stone language learning software for Chitimacha, have daily language and culture classes in the tribal school, and have put up bilingual English-Chitimacha signs in many places.

Last week, I visited the Chitimacha reservation to run a workshop for the language teachers. We practiced many different pronunciation and grammar details, but also coined many new words! Here are a few we came up with:

Neymank Waxta ‘Indigenous Peoples Day’ (literally ‘people of the land’s day')

gaspam ‘refrigerator’ (literally ‘thing that causes it to be cold’)

pexpa patsi ‘volleyball’ = pexpa ‘cause to fly’ + patsi ‘ball’

huuta qapx kudihn ‘kayak’ (literally ‘boat closed in on itself’)

Chitimacha has a unique spelling system:

⟨b, d, g, dz, j⟩ are ejective consonants /pʼ, tʼ, kʼ, t͡sʼ, t͡ʃʼ/

⟨q⟩ is a glottal stop /ʔ/

⟨x⟩ is the palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/

You can read more about the Chitimacha language in my forthcoming book chapter, available here:

posted this earlier on our instagram so i figured it needed to be shared here as well.

Chitimacha is one of the rare languages which uses rising intonation for statements and falling intonation for questions and commands (Swadesh 1946: 317).

This chart using languages from the World Atlas of Language Structures shows just how infrequent this pattern is in the world’s languages (Gordon 2016: 245).

Interestingly, the nearby Chickasaw language also has this unusual pattern, even though the two languages are unrelated (Gordon 2016: 245).

You can learn all about the sound systems of the world’s languages in the excellent book Phonological typology. (The book is aimed at linguists rather than a general audience. An intro linguistics class is probably a prerequisite for the book.)

References

Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2013. The world atlas of language structures online. https://wals.info/.

Gordon, Matthew K. 2016. Phonological typology (Oxford Surveys in Phonology & Phonetics 1). Oxford University Press.