Sewee language

Sewee
Sewee
Native to	United States
Region	South Carolina
Ethnicity	Sewee
Era	attested 1670
Language family	unclassified (Siouan-Catawban?)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist List	07z
Glottolog	None

The Sewee language is a poorly attested and unclassified language once spoken by the Sewee, a historical Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands from present-day South Carolina.

Vocabulary

Some Sewee words were recorded in 1670 by Nicholas Carteret and William Owen.^: 1639

appada ‘friend’ (?) (recorded by Carteret)
hiddie dod ‘a word of great kindness among them’ (recorded by Owen)
hiddeskeh ‘sickly’ (recorded by Owen)
Hiddy doddy Comorado Angles Westoe Skorrye ‘English very good friends, Westoes are nought’ (recorded by Carteret) (Comorado is a Spanish loanword, from camarada 'comrade')

Based on the geographical location of the Sewee people, Zamponi (2024) hypothesizes that the Sewee language may have been a Siouan-Catawban language, although he could not find any evidence of Siouan-Catawban morphemes in any attested Sewee words and phrases.

References

↑ Waddell, Gene. 1980. Indians of the South Carolina lowcountry 1562–1751. Columbia, SC: Southern Studies Program, University of South Carolina.
↑ Cheves, Langdon (ed.). 1897. The Shaftesbury papers and other records relating to Carolina and the first settlement on Ashley River prior to the year 1676. (Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society 5). Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society.
1 2 Zamponi, Raoul (2024). "Unclassified languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America. De Gruyter. pp. 1627–1648. doi:10.1515/9783110712742-061. ISBN 978-3-11-071274-2.
↑ Campbell, Lyle (2024-06-25), "Unclassified and Spurious Languages", The Indigenous Languages of the Americas (1 ed.), Oxford University PressNew York, pp. 280–338, doi:10.1093/oso/9780197673461.003.0005, ISBN 978-0-19-767346-1, retrieved 2025-03-10

[1] Waddell, Gene. 1980. Indians of the South Carolina lowcountry 1562–1751. Columbia, SC: Southern Studies Program, University of South Carolina.

[2] Cheves, Langdon (ed.). 1897. The Shaftesbury papers and other records relating to Carolina and the first settlement on Ashley River prior to the year 1676. (Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society 5). Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society.

[Zamponi_2024-3] 1 2 Zamponi, Raoul (2024). "Unclassified languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America. De Gruyter. pp. 1627–1648. doi:10.1515/9783110712742-061. ISBN 978-3-11-071274-2.

[4] Campbell, Lyle (2024-06-25), "Unclassified and Spurious Languages", The Indigenous Languages of the Americas (1 ed.), Oxford University PressNew York, pp. 280–338, doi:10.1093/oso/9780197673461.003.0005, ISBN 978-0-19-767346-1, retrieved 2025-03-10