A poem awaiting its translation
English ↔ Chikashshanompaꞌ
A Dream Within a Dream · A Chickasaw language study edition
The Chickasaw lines below are a rough, dictionary-based approximation — a fluent, speaker-reviewed translation is still wanted.
Chikashshanompaꞌ is the language of the Chickasaw Nation, carried from the Mississippi homelands to Indian Territory in the 1830s and widely spoken until about 1970. Today fewer than three dozen first-language speakers remain, and the Nation is training new ones. This edition sets Poe's poem beside the language and waits for a speaker's translation. Meanwhile it teaches the spelling, the sounds and the grammar, and finds every word of the poem it can in published sources.
Part one / The poem
The poem, line by line
Each line waits for a speaker's translation. Under each line are the words a published source already gives, so a reader can see which parts of Poe's vocabulary have a match. Select a numbered line for its study note.
| Line | English · source | Chikashshanompaꞌ · translation |
|---|---|---|
| Take this kiss upon the brow! | Kiss brow oh. | |
| And, in parting from you now, | Chokma anowa. | |
| Thus much let me avow — | Yappa aachi. | |
| You are not wrong, who deem | Ishna kiꞌyo. | |
| That my days have been a dream; | Ilhpokona nittak. | |
| Yet if hope has flown away | Hope ocat. | |
| In a night, or in a day, | Oklhiliꞌ ocat, nittak ocat. | |
| In a vision, or in none, | Vision ocat, kiꞌyo. | |
| Is it therefore the less gone? | Moma kiꞌyo tē? | |
| All that we see or seem | Nanta pisa ocat. | |
| Is but a dream within a dream. | Ilhpokona ilhpokona. | |
| I stand amid the roar | Roar em ala. | |
| Of a surf-tormented shore, | Shore em ala. | |
| And I hold within my hand | Ilbak em hold. | |
| Grains of the golden sand — | Shinuk golden. | |
| How few! yet how they creep | Cutkē mon. | |
| Through my fingers to the deep, | Ilbukoshi em deep mon. | |
| While I weep — while I weep! | Weep, weep! | |
| O God! Can I not grasp | Abaꞌ Binniꞌliꞌ! Grasp monēkot tē? | |
| Them with a tighter clasp? | Clasp monēkot tē? | |
| O God! can I not save | Abaꞌ Binniꞌliꞌ! Save monēkot tē? | |
| One from the pitiless wave? | Wave em monēkot tē? | |
| Is all that we see or seem | Nanta pisa ocat. | |
| But a dream within a dream? | Ilhpokona ilhpokona tē? |
Part two / Learn the language
Meet Chikashshanompaꞌ.
How it is written, how it sounds, how its sentences work, and where it has been.
Sounds and spelling
Chickasaw is written in two systems. Humes (1973) spells words the way an English reader would sound them out; Munro-Willmond (1994) marks pitch accent, the glottal stop and nasal vowels. The Nation's program uses both. For “to be five”, Munro-Willmond writes talhlháꞌpi and Humes writes tulhapi.
| Letter | Sound | Like | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | /a, ə/ | short a, close to the a in about | paskabread |
| aa | /aː/ | long a, as in father | sahashaaI'm angry |
| a̱ | /ãː/ | long nasal a | ipa̱shiꞌhair |
| i | /ɪ/ | short i, as in hit | pisashe looks at him |
| ii | /iː/ | long i, as in seed | piiniꞌboat |
| i̱ | /ĩː/ | long nasal i | i̱sintiꞌhis snake |
| o | /o/ | short o | ofiꞌdog |
| oo | /oː/ | long o | ihoowoman |
| o̱ | /õː/ | long nasal o | iso̱lashtongue |
| ꞌ | /ʔ/ | glottal stop, the catch in the middle of uh-uh | ofiꞌdog |
| lh | /ɬ/ | like the ilth in filth without the t: air past the sides of the tongue | talhlháꞌpito be five |
| ch | /tʃ/ | the ch in church | chofatait's clean |
| sh | /ʃ/ | the sh in ship | shala'lihe slides |
| b | /b, β/ | b; between vowels it can soften toward v | bihiꞌmulberry |
The other consonants are written as in English: m, n, p, t, k, f, s, h, l, y and w. Every consonant except the glottal stop can be doubled, and a doubled letter is held longer: ittiꞌ, tree.
Pitch accent
Munro-Willmond marks pitch accent with an acute: talhlháꞌpi. Apple added a Chickasaw keyboard in 2023 with keys for accent, nasal vowels and the glottal stop.
Long and short
Vowel length changes meaning, and short vowels in the second of a pair of open syllables are lengthened in speech: pisali, “I look at her”.
The glottal stop
Written ꞌ, it ends many nouns. Color words take one when they follow a noun: foshiꞌ hommaꞌ, red bird.
How sentences work
The verb comes last
Chickasaw puts subject, then object, then verb, and builds long words from prefixes and suffixes.
- ofiꞌat mallithe dog is jumping
“I” as a doer
Active verbs mark the subject with a set of endings and prefixes.
- malliliI jump
- ishmalliyou jump
- iimalliwe jump
- hashmalliyou all jump
- mallihe, she, it or they jump
“I” as one it happens to
States and conditions use a second set, the same set that marks objects.
- salhinkoI am fat
- chilhinkoyou are fat
- polhinkowe are fat
Both at once
Doer prefixes come before object prefixes.
- sapisahe looks at me
- issapisayou look at me
- iichipisawe look at you
- hachipisaliI look at you all
Saying no
Negative verbs take their own prefix and ending.
- iklohe doesn't arrive
- ikmaliꞌlohe's not running
Grades
Changing a word's inner shape shifts its meaning.
- foyopato breathe
- fóyyoꞌpato give a sigh of relief
- foyohómpato be breathing
Everyday words
A short history
- 1540
Hernando de Soto's expedition meets the Chickasaw and records them as Chicaza.
- 1832
The Chickasaw are forced to sell their homelands; Removal to Indian Territory follows in the 1830s.
- 1973
Rev. Jesse J. Humes and Vinnie May (James) Humes publish the first Chickasaw dictionary.
- 1994
Pamela Munro and Catherine Willmond publish Chickasaw: An Analytical Dictionary, about 12,000 entries.
- 2007
The Chickasaw Nation founds its Language Revitalization Program, beginning with master-apprentice teams.
- 2013
Emily Johnson Dickerson, the last monolingual Chickasaw speaker, dies.
- 2022
Governor Bill Anoatubby declares 2022–2032 the Decade of Chickasaw Language.
Practice with every word
Every word of the poem
All 85 different words in Poe's poem, in the order they first appear. Each card shows the Chickasaw form a published source gives, a note on how the language handles the word, or an honest blank where no source has it yet.
Which words
13 of 85 words have a published Chickasaw form here, and 7 more have a grammar note. The rest are open for a speaker to fill in.
- Read the English word and try to recall the Chickasaw form.
- Reveal it and say it slowly, letter by letter, using the alphabet above.
- Find the word in the poem and look at its line's study note.
- Ask a speaker or the language program about the words still open.
See the full word list (85 words)
| Take | Not yet in our sources. | |
| this | Not yet in our sources. | |
| kiss | Not yet in our sources. | |
| upon | Not yet in our sources. | |
| the | Chickasaw has no word for “the” or “a”. A subject can take the ending -at instead: ofiꞌat malli, the dog is jumping. | |
| brow | Not yet in our sources. | |
| And | Not yet in our sources. | |
| in | Not yet in our sources. | |
| parting | Not yet in our sources. | |
| from | Not yet in our sources. | |
| you | ish-; chi- | you as the doer (ishmalli, you jump); you as the object (chipisa, he looks at you) · Wikipedia, Chickasaw language |
| now | Not yet in our sources. | |
| Thus | Not yet in our sources. | |
| much | Not yet in our sources. | |
| let | Not yet in our sources. | |
| me | sa- | me: sapisa, he looks at me · Wikipedia, Chickasaw language |
| avow | Not yet in our sources. | |
| are | There is no separate word for “are”. A state is itself a verb: chilhinko, “you are fat”. | |
| not | ik- … -o | the negative frame: iklo, he doesn't arrive · UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive word list |
| wrong | Not yet in our sources. | |
| who | Not yet in our sources. | |
| deem | Not yet in our sources. | |
| That | Not yet in our sources. | |
| my | Not yet in our sources. | |
| days | nittak | day · Chickasaw.tv, Rosetta Stone Chickasaw ep. 117 |
| have | Not yet in our sources. | |
| been | There is no separate word for “been”. A state is itself a verb, with tense added as a suffix. | |
| a | Chickasaw has no word for “a” or “the”. A subject can take the ending -at instead: ofiꞌat malli, the dog is jumping. | |
| dream | Not yet in our sources. | |
| Yet | Not yet in our sources. | |
| if | Not yet in our sources. | |
| hope | Not yet in our sources. | |
| has | Not yet in our sources. | |
| flown | Not yet in our sources. | |
| away | Not yet in our sources. | |
| night | oklhiliꞌ | night · Chickasaw.tv, Rosetta Stone Chickasaw ep. 117 |
| or | Not yet in our sources. | |
| day | nittak | day · Chickasaw.tv, Rosetta Stone Chickasaw ep. 117 |
| vision | Not yet in our sources. | |
| none | Not yet in our sources. | |
| Is | There is no separate word for “is”. A state is itself a verb: salhinko, “I am fat”. | |
| it | There is usually no word for “it”. The third person is the bare verb: malli, he, she, it or they jump. | |
| therefore | Not yet in our sources. | |
| less | Not yet in our sources. | |
| gone | Not yet in our sources. | |
| All | Not yet in our sources. | |
| we | ii-, il-; po- | we as the doer (iimalli, we jump); we in a state (polhinko, we are fat) · Wikipedia, Chickasaw language |
| see | pisa | to look at · UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive word list |
| seem | Not yet in our sources. | |
| but | Not yet in our sources. | |
| within | Not yet in our sources. | |
| I | -li | I, as the doer: mallili, I jump · Wikipedia, Chickasaw language |
| stand | hikkiꞌya; hika | he's standing up; stand up! · UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive word list |
| amid | Not yet in our sources. | |
| roar | Not yet in our sources. | |
| Of | Not yet in our sources. | |
| surf-tormented | Not yet in our sources. | |
| shore | Not yet in our sources. | |
| hold | Not yet in our sources. | |
| hand | ilbak (Humes: ilbuk) | hand · Wiktionary (Chickasaw) |
| Grains | Not yet in our sources. | |
| golden | Not yet in our sources. | |
| sand | Not yet in our sources. | |
| How | Not yet in our sources. | |
| few | Not yet in our sources. | |
| they | “They” usually lives in the bare verb: malli means he, she, it or they jump. | |
| creep | Not yet in our sources. | |
| Through | Not yet in our sources. | |
| fingers | Not yet in our sources. | |
| to | Not yet in our sources. | |
| deep | Not yet in our sources. | |
| While | Not yet in our sources. | |
| weep | Not yet in our sources. | |
| O | Not yet in our sources. | |
| God | Chihoowa; Abaꞌ Binniꞌliꞌ | God; the One Who Sits Above · Chickasaw Nation, Chickasaw Language page |
| Can | Not yet in our sources. | |
| grasp | Not yet in our sources. | |
| Them | Not yet in our sources. | |
| with | Not yet in our sources. | |
| tighter | Not yet in our sources. | |
| clasp | Not yet in our sources. | |
| save | Not yet in our sources. | |
| One | chaffa | one · Wiktionary (Chickasaw) |
| pitiless | Not yet in our sources. | |
| wave | Not yet in our sources. | |
Chickasaw forms come from the Chickasaw Nation, Chickasaw.tv lessons, the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive word list, Wikipedia's grammar tables and Wiktionary. Few full dictionaries are open online, so many words of the poem are still unsourced here. A speaker or the Nation's language program can fill them in.
Add your voice
Translate the poem into Chikashshanompaꞌ.
This edition is waiting for a translation by a Chickasaw speaker or the language program, and for a reading in the speaker's own voice. Translations are reviewed for accuracy and permissions, and the translator's credit is kept.