Fox (known by a variety of different names, including Mesquakie (Meskwaki), Mesquakie-Sauk, Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo, Sauk-Fox, and Sac and Fox) is an Algonquian language, spoken by a thousand

Meskwaki The Meskwaki (sometimes spelled Mesquaki), also known by the European exonyms Fox Indians or the Fox, are a Native American people. They have been closely linked to the Sauk people of the same language family. In the Meskwaki language, th ...

, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

and in

northern Mexico Northern Mexico ( es, el Norte de México ), commonly referred as , is an informal term for the northern cultural and geographical area in Mexico. Depending on the source, it contains some or all of the states of Baja California, Baja California ...

Dialects

The three distinct dialects are: * Fox or'' Meskwakiatoweni ''(Meskwaki language) (also called Mesquakie, Meskwaki) * Sauk or ''Thâkiwâtowêweni'' (Thâkîwaki language) (also rendered Sac), and * Kickapoo (also rendered ''Kikapú''; considered by some to be a closely related but distinct language). If Kickapoo is counted as a separate language rather than a dialect of Fox, then only between 200 and 300 speakers of Fox remain. Extinct Mascouten was most likely another dialect, though it is scarcely attested.

Revitalization

Most speakers are elderly or middle-aged, making it highly

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and in ...

. The tribal school at the Meskwaki Settlement in Iowa incorporates bilingual education for children. In 2011, the Meskwaki Sewing Project was created, to bring mothers and girls together "with elder women in the Meskwaki Senior Center sewing traditional clothing and learning the Meskwaki language." Prominent scholars doing research on the language include Ives Goddard and Lucy Thomason of the Smithsonian Institution and Amy Dahlstrom of the University of Chicago.

Phonology

The consonant phonemes of Fox are given in the table below. The eight vowel phonemes are: short and long . Other than those involving a consonant plus or , the only possible consonant cluster is . Until the early 1900s, Fox was a phonologically very conservative language and preserved many features of Proto-Algonquian; records from the decades immediately following 1900 are particularly useful to Algonquianists for this reason. By the 1960s, however, an extensive progression of phonological changes had taken place, resulting in the loss of intervocalic semivowels and certain other features.

Grammar

Vocabulary

Mesquakie numerals are as follows:

Writing systems

Besides the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

, Fox has been written in two indigenous scripts. "Fox I" is an

abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel no ...

based on the cursive French alphabet (see Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics). Consonants written by themselves are understood to be syllables containing the vowel /a/. They are l /pa/, t /ta/, s /sa/, d /ša/, tt /ča/, I /ya/, w /wa/, m /ma/, n /na/, K /ka/, q /kwa/. The characters ''d'' for /š/, ''tt'' for /č/, and ''q'' for /kw/ derive from French ''ch, tch,'' and ''q(u)''. Vowels are written by adding dots to the consonant: l. /pe/, l· /pi/, l.. /po/. "Fox II" is a consonant–vowel alphabet, though according to Coulmas, /p/ is not written (as /a/ is not written in Fox I). Vowels (or /p/ plus a vowel) are written as cross-hatched tally marks, approximately × /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/. Consonants are (approximately) + /t/, C /s/, Q /š/, ı /č/, ñ /v/,Actually, like one script ''n'' stacked on another. ═ /y/, ƧƧ /w/, 田 /m/, # /n/, C′ /k/, ƧC /kw/.

References

*Bloomfield, Leonard. 1925. "Notes on the Fox Language." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 3:219-32. *Cowan, William 1991. "Observations Regarding Fox (Mesquakie) Phonology". ''Papers of the Twenty-Second Algonquian Conference''. *Dahlstrom, Amy. (N.d.). ''Meskwaki Syntax (Manuscript)''. Retrieved from https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/adahlstrom/publications-2/selected-manuscripts/meskwaki-syntax-book *Voorhis, Paul H. 1974. ''Introduction to the Kickapoo Language'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

External links

Native Languages of the Americas: Mesquakie-SaukFox texts (1907), ed. William JonesThe Owl Sacred Pack of the Fox Indians (1921), ed. Truman MichelsonThe Autobiography of a Fox Indian Woman (1895), ed. Truman Michelson
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OLAC resources in and about the Meskwaki languageOLAC resources in and about the Kickapoo languageA Concise Dictionary of the Sauk Language
, 2005, Gordon Whittaker, The Sac & Fox National Public Library, Stroud, Oklahoma {{Algonquian languages Algonquian languages Native American language revitalization Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands Indigenous languages of the North American Plains Indigenous languages of Oklahoma Endangered Algic languages Articles citing INALI Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas Kickapoo tribe