Apalachee language

Apalachee was a Muskogean language of Florida. It was closely related to Koasati and Alabama.¹ Apalachee was found to belong to the same branch of the Muskogean family as Koasati, Alabama, and Hitchiti.² Apalachee was originally spoken in western Florida, but is believed to have last been spoken in the nineteenth century by Apalachee people that had been removed to Louisiana.^3: 11

The language is known primarily from one document, a letter written in 1688 to Charles II of Spain. The original version of that letter is lost, but a copy published in 1860 survives. Additional Apalachee texts are said to have existed in archives in Havana but they have never been located.^4: 136

The letter is accompanied by a loose Spanish translation, from which some aspects of Apalachee have been inferred. Related Muskogean languages have also been used to help understand the structure of Apalachee.^{4: 136–137 5: 388} Geoffrey Kimball produced a grammatical sketch⁴ and a vocabulary of the language⁵ based on these resources.

Apalachee is one of only three indigenous languages from its region to have any surviving documentation, alongside Timucua and Calusa.^3: 28

Orthography is only shown where it differs from the IPA.

Vowels may also be elongated.^4: 138

Apalachee relies on fixed word order (subject–object–verb) rather than case marking to specify the subject and object of a sentence. Apalachee does have some case markings, but does not rely on them to the same degree that other Muskogean languages do.^4: 139

There is significant affixation in Apalachee morphology. Possession and pluralization are both marked by affixes on the noun. Objects can be marked on the verbs by prefixes.^{4: 140–141, 147} Derivational affixes are attested for both nouns and verbs, including distributive and causative markers.^{4: 153, 156}