Language
Historically, the Seminole spoke two mutually unintelligible Muskogean languages, Mikasuki and Creek. Creek was the dominant language in politics and society, so Mikasuki speakers also learned Creek. As of 2002, about one-quarter of the tribe still spoke Creek, and most of these, English; the remainder spoke only English. Mikasuki is extinct in Oklahoma (the latter is spoken among a majority of Miccosukee and Seminole in Florida).
English is the primary language of most of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. The tribe is establishing a Seminole Nation Language Program to revitalize its traditional Creek language.
Read more about this topic: Seminole Nation Of Oklahoma
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)