Discover

(Redirected from Meskwaki language)

'Fox' (known by a variety of different names, including 'Mesquakie', 'Meskwaki', 'Mesquakie-Sauk', 'Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo', 'Sac and Fox', and others) is an Algonquian Indian language, spoken by around 1000 Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States. There are three distinct dialects: Fox (also called ''Mesquakie'', ''Meskwaki'', and ''Meshkwahkihaki''), Sauk (also called ''Sac'', and ''Sac and Fox''), and Kickapoo (also called ''Kikapú''; considered by some to be a separate but closely-related language). If Kickapoo is counted as a separate language rather than a dialect of Fox, then there are only between 200 and 300 speakers of Fox.
Most speakers are elderly or middle-aged, and there are no children learning the language, making it highly endangered. Prominent scholars doing research on the language include Ives Goddard of the Smithsonian Institution and Amy Dahlstrom of the University of Chicago.

Contents

Phonology

See also

External links

References

Phonology

The consonant phonemes of Fox are given in the table below. There are eight vowel phonemes: short /a, e, i, o/ and long .

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar or palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops and affricate	p	t		k
Fricatives		s			h
Nasals	m	n
Semivowels	w		j

There are also preaspirated stops and affricate: . The only cluster is apparently , or any consonant or cluster followed by a semivowel.

See also

★ Sac and Fox Nation

External links

★ Native Languages of the Americas: Mesquakie-Sauk

★ Mesquakie Language Report on Ethnologue

★ Kickapoo Language Report on Ethnologue

References

★ Bloomfield, Leonard. 1925. "Notes on the Fox Language." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 3:219-32.