About HALITO TOMATO

HALITO! That’s how you say “hello” in the Native American Choctaw language!

I started HALITO TOMATO to share my knowledge about Choctaw culture, history, and language with the rest of the world. I’m especially interested in comparing the Choctaw language with the languages of our world, both modern and ancient, for reasons explained further below.

Along the way, we’ll look at ancient Choctaw stories, myths, prophecies, monsters, and more. We’ll look at what North American life was like before European contact, and how things changed afterward. And, because games are such an important part of Choctaw culture, we’ll look at some of the old games Choctaws used to play – maybe we’ll even be able to revive some. Similarly, I hope to translate some of my favorite songs and retro video games into Choctaw, as a way to improve my skills with the language.

Who Am I?

My name is Clyde Mandelin. For the past 25+ years I’ve gone by the online name of “Tomato” or just “Mato”. I’ve been a professional Japanese-to-English translator for 20+ years and have written many books and articles about translation. I also enjoy making and playing video games. For more information, please see here and/or watch this movie.

I’m part Choctaw, and I learned about Choctaw stories, history, and customs from my family when I was growing up. But because I grew up far from the tribes in Oklahoma and Mississippi, I never learned the language when I was young. I decided to finally learn the language in 2024.

While studying Choctaw words and grammar, I started noticing similarities with the Japanese language. As I progressed, I noticed that the Choctaw language seemed to connect with many other languages too:

What is this? What’s going on? How is the Choctaw language able to look ancient AND modern at the same time? How is the Choctaw language so similar to languages from other continents? It’s mysterious and exciting, but there’s so much background information to cover that I don’t know where to start to explain. So let’s just take a look at the basics for now. But if you want to jump ahead, you can see my current thoughts here.

Your Invitation

If you’re reading this, then you’ve temporarily stumbled onto my path in life. If you’ve followed my path before, halito to you again! And if you’re new, or if you’re normally 0% interested in this sort of stuff, I still invite you to follow this path for a short while – it’s going to be a memorable journey, and you’ll probably grow as a person.

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Quick Choctaw History

In the old times, the Choctaw tribe was centered in the Mississippi and Alabama regions of North America. However, The United States forcibly removed the tribe to Oklahoma in the 1800s via the gruesome Trail of Tears. As a result, the Choctaw tribe was split apart – some went to Oklahoma, some hid in the forests and swamps of Mississippi, and some fled to other regions.

Today, there are only 9000 native Choctaw speakers in the world, and most are elderly. As a result, the Choctaw language is officially listed as “endangered”. Naturally, the idea of “we can’t lose our language!” is at the heart of modern Choctaw culture.

Some other important facts about the Choctaw people include:

• The ancient Choctaws were a mound-building tribe
• The ancient Choctaws were excellent farmers, and they often had lots of extra food to trade or share with other tribes
• The ancient Choctaws’ clan/kinship system made it difficult to needlessly declare war on other tribes – instead, games were the preferred outlet for aggression
• The ancient Choctaws hunted woolly mammoths at some point, according to old stories
• DNA analysis seems to suggest that Choctaws are connected to East Asia, Siberia, and the Bering Strait
• In 1997, it was discovered that some Choctaws have a rare blood type never seen before
• Deer are extremely important in Choctaw culture
• Bones are extremely important in Choctaw culture
• Ancient Choctaws didn’t worship a god or gods, but they did revere the sun and believed that it had powers of cleansing and perception
• Ancient Choctaws also believed that fire is alive, that fire is an extension of the sun, and that fire and the sun can communicate with each other
• Today, 500 years after European contact, Choctaw culture is a blend of the old ways and the newer religion of Christianity
• Choctaws practiced “head-flattening” until sometime in the 1800s
• The Choctaw tribe and the nearby Chickasaw tribe are considered “brothers”, and their languages are very similar. There are only about 75 native Chickasaw speakers alive today, and most are elderly, making the Chickasaw language “severely endangered”

There’s much more to list, of course – we’ll look at these topics and more in future articles.

Nanih Waiya Burial Mound, Mississippi

The Choctaw tribe is historically known for its many burial mounds. The most important mound in Choctaw culture is called “Nanih Waiya” (roughly pronounced: Nahnee Wha-yah). Nanih Waiya is located in modern-day Mississippi:

Ancient Choctaw stories speak of a great migration from the west or northwest. For 43 winters, the Choctaws’ ancestors carried the bones of their people on their backs. Eventually, they reached their destination and built the Nanih Waiya mound in modern-day Mississippi. Supposedly, the mound dates back to the year 400 or 500.

When I was little, my grandparents took me on a trip to Mississippi to visit other Choctaw family members. We visited Nanih Waiya twice during this trip – once when arriving in Mississippi, and once when leaving.

On a side note, there’s a long history of mound-building in southeastern North America. The LSU Campus Mounds in Louisiana, for example, are approximately 11,000 years old and might be the oldest human structures on the continent.

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Japanese “Kofun” Burial Mounds

When I was a teenager, I began studying the Japanese language. I even lived in Japan for a year during university. After I graduated, I began a long career as a professional Japanese-to-English translator.

When I first began to study Japanese, I was surprised to learn about the ancient Kofun Period of Japanese history. During the Kofun Period, burial mounds (known as kofun in Japanese) were built all throughout Japan. The Kofun Period seems to have lasted from the 300s to the 600s.

Some kofun mounds are small:

Other mounds are massive, keyhole-shaped, and are often connected with rulers and emperors:

Naniwa, Japan

While studying in Japan, I learned that there was once an ancient Japanese capital and port city named “Naniwa / Naniwa-kyō“, dating back to the Kofun Period and probably even earlier. Naniwa is so old that its origin predates the Japanese writing system. In the 1400s or so, Naniwa was officially renamed Osaka.

Today, the “Naniwa” name can still be seen in and around the Osaka area:

What’s more, Japan’s largest and most famous kofun burial mounds are clustered near the Naniwa district of Osaka:

Naturally, I was surprised by the similarity with the Choctaws’ Nanih Waiya: two burial mound cultures, from the exact same time period, and with quite similar names. But I figured it could also just be a coincidence – after all, the Choctaws lived on the other side of the world. So I made a mental note of this similarity and moved on with my life.

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My “Between Years”

After I graduated university, I began a career in Japanese-to-English translation. I was honored to work on many of Japan’s most well known entertainment series.

I learned many things during these years as a translator. Given the nature of my work, I dealt with all kinds of speech patterns on a daily basis: modern slang, centuries-old Classical Japanese, era-specific Internet memes, military jargon, baby talk, political speech, and lots more. Learning to navigate these speech patterns was challenging but fun – most of these topics aren’t heavily taught in university courses, for example. Working with Japanese dialects was especially fun – Japan is so full of little islands and isolated mountain regions that dialects paint a vibrant language landscape:

Incidentally, sometimes I encountered Native American-themed characters during the course of my translation work. This was always a delight, and I enjoyed seeing how indigenous tribes were represented in popular Japanese media. Some examples include:

I love to translate, whether it’s as a job or as a hobby. Naturally, I encountered Native American characters during my hobby work too:

If you’re curious, the biggest Japanese stereotype of Native Americans is summed up by the phrase インディアンはウソつかない (Indian wa uso tsukanai, “Indians don’t lie”). This quote seems to have strong roots in old American entertainment translated into Japanese, such as:

Anyway, during these 20+ years of my “between years”, I just lived my life, moved around, got married, worked, and did many projects with people online. I was so busy, though, that I only kept up with the biggest Choctaw news stories, such as:

• A famous U.S. political lobbyist scammed the Choctaws out of millions of dollars, served 43 months in prison
• Nanih Waiya was finally returned to the Mississippi Choctaws in 2008
• Relations between the Choctaws and the Irish began to blossom further

I still hadn’t learned the Choctaw language yet – it was still firmly an “I’ll do it later” thing. Finally, in 2024, I decided that “later is now”.

Studying the Choctaw Language

Early in my Choctaw studies, I noticed that a few basic words set off my “this feels like a southern Japanese/Ryukyu/Okinawa island dialect” instinct. But, again, the Choctaws live on the other side of the world, so I wasn’t sure what to make of what I was seeing.

(I still have so much more to write, lay out, and explain on this page, but you can read more about my study setup here for now.)

Current Thoughts

As a translator, I naturally find this field very exciting to study, but it’s also clearly important to use caution and avoid jumping to conclusions recklessly. When European missionaries encountered the Choctaws centuries ago, for example, they excitedly jumped to many conclusions about the Choctaws, such as:

• Trying to link the Choctaws to the Egyptian pyramid builders
• Trying to link the Choctaws to the lost tribes of Israel as mentioned in the Bible
• Trying to link the Choctaws’ big migration to the Biblical floods and especially with the story of Noah

The same missionaries of the time also tried to connect the Choctaw language with Latin, Ancient Greek, and such, because these were matters that they knew a lot about. Now, a couple hundred years later, my background in Japanese has ME trying to connect the Choctaws in a different way. This seems to be a common phenomenon in historical translation studies, so it’s important to step back from time to time and not lose perspective.

My current view of the situation is that over time, new words from an outside culture can “paint over” existing words in another culture, like a paint roller rolling over an existing painting. As this “painting over” phenomenon builds up over thousands of years, it begins to look kind of like the rock layers of a geological formation. My view is that the Choctaw language is an old relic of human history, and that it’s from an important geologic layer of language that still isn’t well known or documented. Another way to put it: my guess is that the Choctaws ancestors’ ancestors were probably related to or neighbors with Japan’s ancestors’ ancestors, China’s ancestors’ ancestors, etc. Thus, any similarities with modern-day Choctaw are probably just pieces of that old language layer peeking through.

I look forward to studying this old language layer more – not just through Choctaw, but other native languages as well. I also hope to learn many other languages, including ancient ones, just to see what there is to see. I doubt I’ll be able to learn every language I want during my lifetime, but I’m just happy to have the chance. Especially in this era, with modern technology and our highly connected world.

Thank You

This is a weird topic about an already obscure topic, so I thank you for reading this far. Keep in mind, this is still just the About page – I have so much more to learn, write, and make. I’ll probably be looking through dictionaries and grammar books for the rest of my life – it’s somehow that fun for me. I hope you’ll visit HALITO TOMATO from time to time, maybe even just once a year, to see what’s going on. Who knows, maybe we’ll learn some cool, unexpected stuff together.

If, by some chance, you decide to learn the Choctaw language – or even just learn a few words – let me know. I’ll learn your language back as thanks!