Koasati language

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Koasati
Spoken in:	United States
Region:	Elton, Louisiana and Livingston, Texas.
Total speakers:	200
Language family:	Muskogean Eastern Muskogean Koasati
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`nai`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`cku`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Koasati (usually Coushatta) is a Native American language of Muskogean stock. The language is spoken by the Coushatta people, most of whom live in Allen Parish north of the town of Elton, Louisiana though a smaller number share a reservation near Livingston, Texas with the Alabama people. Linguist Geoffrey Kimball has estimated the number of speakers of the language to be around 400 people with approximately 350 speakers living in Louisiana (Kimball 1991).

Koasati is most closely related to the Alabama language, but though the Coushatta and Alabama have historically lived in proximity to each other, their languages are no longer mutually intelligible without extensive exposure. The language is also related to the Mikasuki language and some native speakers of Coushatta report they have been able to understand Mikasuki even without previous exposure to the language.

One notable feature of the language is that men and women use slightly different grammatical forms of verbs.