Comanche language

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Comanche is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche people. It is closely related to the language of the Shoshone, from which the Comanche diverged around 1700. Although efforts are now being made to ensure its survival, most speakers of the language are elderly, and less than one percent of the Comanches can speak the language. In the late 1800s, Comanche children were placed in boarding schools where they were discouraged from speaking their native language, and even severely punished for doing so. The second generation then grew up speaking English, because of the belief that it was better for them not to know Comanche.

During World War II, a group of seventeen young men referred to as the Comanche Code Talkers, were trained and used by the U.S. Army to send messages conveying sensitive information that could not be deciphered by the enemy.

Sounds

Vowels

Comanche has six vowels which occur voiced with short and long forms, and voiceless in a short form. The phoneme /ə/ is phonetically [ɘ] or [ɜ].

	Front			Central			Back
	short	long	voiceless	short	long	voiceless	short	long	voiceless
Close	i	iː	i̥				u	uː	u̥
Mid	e	eː	e̥	ə	əː	ə̥	o	oː	o̥
Open				a	aː	ḁ

Diphthongs

Comanche has two diphthongs:

• /ai/
• /oi/

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
				plain	labial
Stop	p	t		k
Affricate
Fricative		s				h
Nasal	m	n
Approximant	w		j

Writing system

The Comanche Alphabet was developed by Dr. Alice Anderton, a linguistic anthropologist, and was adopted as the official Comanche Alphabet by the Comanche Nation in 1994. The alphabet is not entirely phonemic, as there are some phonemes that are represented by two letters. The alphabet is as follows:

Alphabet	Pronunciation	Alphabet	Pronunciation
a	/a/	p	[p] /p/
b		r
e	/e/	s	/s/
h	/h/	t	[t] /t/
i	/i/	u	/u/
k	/k/	ʉ	/ə/
m	/m/	w	/w/
n	/n/	y	/j/
o	/o/

Notes:

• Long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel, e.g. .
• Voiceless vowels are indicated by an underline, e.g. .
• When the stress does not fall on the first syllable of the word, it is marked with an acute accent <´>, e.g. kʉtséena, "coyote".
• The glottal stop <ʔ> is sometimes written as .
• The phonemes /ʦ/ and /kʷ/ are written as and , respectively.

Examples

The following are examples of words from the Comanche language. They are based primarily on the Comanche Vocabulary: Trilingual Edition by Manuel García Rejón. The orthography used here is not the official Comanche Alphabet, but is based on Spanish orthography. In it, doubled letters are long, and h is always sounded as in the English "hit", even in the middle of a word, as in "cuhtz" (buffalo). An accent mark indicates stress on that syllable.

English	Comanche
Boy	Tuinéhpua
Brother (Older)	Bávi
Brother (Younger)	Rámi
Buffalo	Cuhtz
Corn	Janib
Cougar	Toyarohco
Coyote	Tzensa
Cricket	Tuaahtaqui
Deer	Areca
Dog	Sarrie
Father	Ap
Fire	Cuuna
Fish	Pécui
Frog	Pasauiyió
Grass	Sonip
Horse	Puc
House	Caani
Jerky	Inap
Moon	Muea
Mother	Pia
No	Niatz
Owl	Mupitz
Rabbit	Tábo
Rain	Emar
Rainbow	Paracoa
River	Piajunubi
Sister (Older)	Batzi
Sister (Younger)	Nami
Sky	Tomóbi
Star	Tatzinupi
Sun	Taabe
Water	Paa
Yes	Jaa

External links

• [Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee] (Numu Tekwapuha Nomneekatu)
• [Comanche alphabet] at Omniglot.com
• ["Hello!"] in Comanche
• [Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana, in the year 1852 / by Randolph B. Marcy ; assisted by George B. McClellan.] hosted by the [Portal to Texas History.] See charts in the back of the book that compare the English, Comanche, and Wichita languages.

References

• Ager, Simon. "Comanche (numu tekwapu)." Internet: October 14, 2005.
• Bruce, Benjamin. "Marúawe!" Internet: October 14, 2005.
• Charney, Jean Ormsbee, 1993. A Grammar of Comanche. London/Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. (Viewed at the [Rosetta Project])
• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
• Rejón, Manuel García, 1995. Comanche Vocabulary: Trilingual Edition. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• "The Language." Internet: October 22, 2005.

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