Part I: Kil anumpuli! "Let's talk!"

By Lee Longhorn

Halito! Chim Achukma? Vm achukma yakoke! Sv hohchifo yvt Lee. Bixby vtta li. Chi pisa la chike. (Hello! How are you? I’m fine, thank you. My name is Lee. I live in Bixby. I’ll see you later.)

No, dear friends, this is not a repeat of the introduction from my first blog entry, although they are written in the same language family.

This introduction is in Choctaw. In case you need a refresher, I am not of the Choctaw tribe. Sometimes I like to wish I were but that feeling subsides. I do like their hymns. Well … I like one hymn. Though, I can recall neither its name nor number.

In my previous post, I mentioned the time my Shawnee grandmother arranged a contest between my brother and cousin to see who knew more Creek words and phrases. My brother belted out a common expression, “Hompkvs ce,” which means “Let’s eat.”

My grandmother and cousin laughed because it was how he said it. He literally belted it out like it was chow time in the Bucktrot house.

As a kid, I don’t remember a lot of my grandmother speaking Shawnee. Actually, the times I do remember her speaking it, she always had a cigarette in her mouth. That’s one thing I’ll never forget about her. What little I can remember about her is that she spoke it very smoothly. It was almost like an orchestral piece with no breaks. There was no hesitation, just natural flow.

Lee Longhorn is a reporter for the Muscogee Nation News.