The Choctaw language (Choctaw: ), spoken by the Choctaw, an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, is part of the Muskogean language family. Chickasaw is separate but closely related language to Choctaw. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma published the New Choctaw dictionary in 2016. Orthography The written Choctaw language is based upon the English version of the Roman alphabet and was developed in conjunction with the "civilization program" of the United States, a program to westernize and forcefully assimilate Indigenous Americans, particularly those adhering to what were to become the Five Civilized Tribes (of which the Choctaw are a part) into Anglo-American Culture and Sympathies during the early 19th century. Although there are other variations of the Choctaw alphabet, the three most commonly seen are the Byington (Traditional), Byington/Swanton (Linguistic), and Modern (Mississippi Choctaw). Many publications by linguists about the Choctaw language use a slight variant of the "modern (Mississippi Choctaw)" orthography listed here, where long vowels are written as doubled. In the "linguistic" version, the acute accent shows the position of the pitch accent, rather than the length of the vowel. The discussion of Choctaw grammar below uses the linguistic variant of the orthography. Choctaw Bible Translation Committee Substituted with 'v' according to typesetting or encoding constraints. The former is used before a vowel; the latter, before a consonant. The intervocalic use of <hl> conflated the common consonant cluster /hl/ with /ɬ/. Dictionary editors John Swanton and Henry Halbert systematically replaced all instances of <hl> with <ł>, regardless whether <hl> stood for /ɬ/ or /hl/. Despite the editors' systematic replacement of all <hl> with <ł>, the digraph <lh> was allowed to stand. Dialects There are three dialects of Choctaw (Mithun 1999): "Native" Choctaw on the Choctaw Nation in southeastern Oklahoma Mississippi Choctaw of Oklahoma on Chickasaw Nation of south central Oklahoma (near Durwood) Choctaw of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians near Philadelphia, Mississippi Other speakers live near Tallahassee, Florida, and with the Koasati in Louisiana, and also a few speakers live in Texas and California. Phonology More information on suffixes is in the Morphology section. Consonants The only voiced stop is . The voiceless stops , , and may become partially voiced between vowels, especially and for male speakers. Also, the voiceless stops are slightly aspirated at the onset of words and before stressed syllables, behaving like English voiceless plosives. Controversially, some analyses suggest that all nouns end