Nuts and Bolts: Chickasaw.

I've got a horrid, gluey, rotten, disgusting, putrid and mind-numbing cold... 

...but I'm trying to be positive about it.

Hmm.

I suppose this would be an excellent time to learn to speak the Native American language Chickasaw. Chickasaw has both nasal vowels and nasal consonants. To say a nasal vowel or consonant (the consonants are m and n and ng) you arrange your mouth and tongue as if you're going to say the ordinary sound, but then you release the air through your nose as well as your mouth. In Chickasaw, nasal vowels are usually written down underlined, or sometimes in italics.

Okay. So, if I did learn it, where would I find people to talk to? 

Around Ada.

(That's not a person, but a town in South-East Oklahoma, USA.)

What else is special about Chickasaw?

Well, it's agglutinative - and that's exactly how my head feels at the moment, so I think I'll leave explaining what agglutinative means for now and go and have a quiet lie down

Word To Use Today: nasal. This word comes from the Latin nāsus, which means nose.