Fox language

Fox
Fox
Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo
Meshkwahkihaki
Native to	United States, Mexico
Region	Central Oklahoma, Northeastern Kansas, Iowa, and Coahuila
Ethnicity	760 Meskwaki and Sauk and 820 Kickapoo in the US (2000 census) and 423 Mexican Kickapoo (2010 census)
Native speakers	700: 250 Sauk and Fox and 400 Kickapoo in the US (2007–2015); 60 Kickapoo in Mexico (2020 census)
Language family	Algic Algonquian Fox; ;
Dialects	Fox; Sauk; Kickapoo;
Writing system	Latin, ; Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either:; sac – Fox and Sauk; kic – Kickapoo
Linguist List	qes Mascouten
Glottolog	foxx1245
ELP	Sauk-Fox
	Map showing the distribution of Oklahoma Indian Languages
	Kickapoo is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

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, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States and in northern Mexico.

Dialects

The three distinct dialects are:

Fox or Meskwakiatoweni (Meskwaki language)^[4] (also called Mesquakie, Meskwaki)
Sauk or Thâkiwâtowêweni (Thâkîwaki language) (also rendered Sac), and
Kickapoo or Kiikaapoa (also rendered Kikapú; considered by some to be a closely related but distinct language^[5]).

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. The tribal school at the Meskwaki Settlement in Iowa incorporates bilingual education for children.^[6]^[7] 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."^[8]

Prominent scholars doing research on the language include Ives Goddard^[9] 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 /a, e, i, o/ and long /aː, eː, iː, oː/.

		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar or palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	plain	p	t	tʃ	k
Plosive	preaspirated	ʰp	ʰt	ʰtʃ	ʰk
Fricative			s	ʃ		h
Approximant				j	w

Other than those involving a consonant plus /j/ or /w/, the only possible consonant cluster is /ʃk/.

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.^[10]

Grammar

Vocabulary

Mesquakie numerals are as follows:^[11]

nekoti	one
nîshwi	two
nethwi	three
nyêwi	four
nyânanwi	five
nekotwâshika	six
nôhika	seven
neshwâshika	eight
shâka	nine
metâthwi	ten

Writing systems

Besides the Latin script, Fox has been written in two indigenous scripts.^[12]

Fox I

"Fox I" is an abugida 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:

Syllable
ℓ^[a]	/pa/
t	/ta/
s	/sa/
d	/ša/^[b]
tt	/ča/^[c]
ŋ^[d]	/ya/
w	/wa/
m	/ma/
n	/na/
K	/ka/
g^[e]	/kwa/^[f]

^ Written as a tall loop, similar to a cursive b or l.
^ Character ⟨d⟩ for /š/ derives from French ⟨ch⟩.
^ Character ⟨tt⟩ for /č/ derives from French ⟨tch⟩.
^ The cursive form of capital I is a more graphically accurate approximation for /ya/; the actual character is a small clockwise loop with a long tail.
^ The actual character for /gwa/ or /kwa/ is shaped more like a cursive g or a with a long, winding tail that goes in a loop, almost like a figure-8 shape.
^ Character ⟨q⟩ for /kw/ derives from French ⟨q(u)⟩.

Vowels are written by adding dots to the consonant:

ℓ	/pa/
ℓ.	/pe/
ℓ·	/pi/
ℓ..	/po/

Fox II

"Fox II" is a consonant–vowel alphabet. 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.

Consonants (approximately)
+	/t/
C	/s/
Q	/š/
ı	/č/
ñ	/v/^[a]
═	/y/
ƧƧ	/w/
田	/m/
#	/n/
C′	/k/
ƧC	/kw/

Vowels (approximately)
×	/a/
II	/e/^[b]
~~III~~	/i/^[c]
~~IIII~~	/o/^[d]

^ Actually like one script n stacked on another.
^ If the cross-hatching does not show up (perhaps because this line has been copied without formatting), this is like a small capital H with the cross-bar sticking out on either side.
^ Resembles Chinese 卅 but lower and wider.
^ Resembles Chinese 卌, but lower and wider.

Notes

^ ^a ^b Fox and Sauk at Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021)
Kickapoo at Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021)
^ Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía. (2015). Lenguas indígenas en México y hablantes (de 3 años y más) al 2015. Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
^ Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020 Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020.
^ "Meskwaki Settlement School - Meskwakiatoweni (Meskwaki language)". Archived from the original on 2019-07-23. Retrieved 2019-07-23.
^ Moctezuma Zamarrón, José Luis 2011, El sistema fonológico del Kickapoo de Coahuila analizado desde las metodologías distribucional y funcional Archived 2014-03-04 at the Wayback Machine. México: INALI
^ Meskwaki Settlement School Website, "Meskwaki Settlement School Website". Archived from the original on 2009-02-16. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
^ "Meskwaki Education Network Initiative (MENWI)". American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University. Archived from the original on 2004-01-03. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
^ Scandale, Maria (2011-02-21). "Meskwaki Tribe Receives Grant for Sewing and Language Project - ICTMN.com". Indian Country Today Media Network, ICTMN.com. Archived from the original on 2024-05-26. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
^ Nelson, John (2008-07-27). "Talking the talk". WCFCourier.com. Archived from the original on 2020-08-06. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
^ Language change in the speech community: change by loss of a stylistic register, in Historical Linguistics: Toward a Twenty-First Century Reintegration (ISBN 0521583322), page 57
^ Sauk Counting Worksheet (Sac and Fox). Retrieved 17 March 2019 from http://www.native-languages.org/numbers/sauk_numbers.htm Archived 2019-10-28 at the Wayback Machine
^ Coulmas (1999: 153–155)
^ Jones, William, 1906, p. 90
^ Jones, William, 1906, pp. 90-91

References

Bloomfield, Leonard (1925). "Notes on the Fox Language". International Journal of American Linguistics. 3 (2/4): 219–232. doi:10.1086/463756.

Coulmas, Florian (1999). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Blackwell Publishing.
Dahlstrom, Amy. "Meskwaki Syntax (Manuscript)". Lucian. University of Chicago.
Goddard, Ives (1991). "Observations Regarding Fox (Mesquakie) Phonology". Papers of the Twenty-Second Algonquian Conference. 22: 157–181.
Jones, William (1906). "An Algonquian syllabary". In Lanfer, Berthold (ed.). Boas anniversary volume: Anthropological papers written in honor of Franz Boas. New York: G.E. Stechert. pp. 88–93.
Voorhis, Paul H. (1974). Introduction to the Kickapoo Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-87750-177-0.

External links

Native Languages of the Americas: Mesquakie-Sauk
Fox texts (1907), ed. William Jones
The Owl Sacred Pack of the Fox Indians (1921), ed. Truman Michelson
The Autobiography of a Fox Indian Woman (1895), ed. Truman Michelson
"Last Meskwaki code talker remembers". USATODAY.com. 2002-07-04. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
Meskwaki Language - Alphabet
OLAC resources in and about the Meskwaki language
OLAC resources in and about the Kickapoo language
A Concise Dictionary of the Sauk Language Archived 2020-10-29 at the Wayback Machine , 2005, Gordon Whittaker, The Sac & Fox National Public Library, Stroud, Oklahoma

[14] Written as a tall loop, similar to a cursive b or l.

[15] Character ⟨d⟩ for /š/ derives from French ⟨ch⟩.

[16] Character ⟨tt⟩ for /č/ derives from French ⟨tch⟩.

[17] The cursive form of capital I is a more graphically accurate approximation for /ya/; the actual character is a small clockwise loop with a long tail.

[18] The actual character for /gwa/ or /kwa/ is shaped more like a cursive g or a with a long, winding tail that goes in a loop, almost like a figure-8 shape.

[19] Character ⟨q⟩ for /kw/ derives from French ⟨q(u)⟩.

[21] Actually like one script n stacked on another.

[22] If the cross-hatching does not show up (perhaps because this line has been copied without formatting), this is like a small capital H with the cross-bar sticking out on either side.

[23] Resembles Chinese 卅 but lower and wider.

[24] Resembles Chinese 卌, but lower and wider.

[e24-1] Fox and Sauk at Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021)
Kickapoo at Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021)

[2] Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía. (2015). Lenguas indígenas en México y hablantes (de 3 años y más) al 2015. Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine

[inegi2020-3] Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020 Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020.

[4] "Meskwaki Settlement School - Meskwakiatoweni (Meskwaki language)". Archived from the original on 2019-07-23. Retrieved 2019-07-23.

[5] Moctezuma Zamarrón, José Luis 2011, El sistema fonológico del Kickapoo de Coahuila analizado desde las metodologías distribucional y funcional Archived 2014-03-04 at the Wayback Machine. México: INALI

[6] Meskwaki Settlement School Website, "Meskwaki Settlement School Website". Archived from the original on 2009-02-16. Retrieved 2009-02-03.

[7] "Meskwaki Education Network Initiative (MENWI)". American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University. Archived from the original on 2004-01-03. Retrieved 2012-07-19.

[8] Scandale, Maria (2011-02-21). "Meskwaki Tribe Receives Grant for Sewing and Language Project - ICTMN.com". Indian Country Today Media Network, ICTMN.com. Archived from the original on 2024-05-26. Retrieved 2012-07-19.

[9] Nelson, John (2008-07-27). "Talking the talk". WCFCourier.com. Archived from the original on 2020-08-06. Retrieved 2012-07-19.

[10] Language change in the speech community: change by loss of a stylistic register, in Historical Linguistics: Toward a Twenty-First Century Reintegration (ISBN 0521583322), page 57

[11] Sauk Counting Worksheet (Sac and Fox). Retrieved 17 March 2019 from http://www.native-languages.org/numbers/sauk_numbers.htm Archived 2019-10-28 at the Wayback Machine

[12] Coulmas (1999: 153–155)

[13] Jones, William, 1906, p. 90

[20] Jones, William, 1906, pp. 90-91

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v t e Languages of Oklahoma
Italics indicate extinct languages * indicates extinct language in Oklahoma but still spoken elsewhere
Indigenous	Alabama* Arapaho Caddo Cayuga Cherokee Cheyenne Chickasaw Chiwere (Iowa and Otoe) Choctaw Comanche Delaware Hitchiti-Mikasuki Kansa Koasati Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache Mesquakie (Fox, Kickapoo, and Sauk) Muscogee Osage Ottawa Pawnee Plains Apache Ponca Potawatomi Quapaw Seneca Shawnee Tonkawa Wichita Wyandot Yuchi
Sign languages	American Sign Language Black American Sign Language Plains Sign Talk
Non-Indigenous	English German Spanish Vietnamese
Category

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International	FAST
National	United States France BnF data Israel

Fox
Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo
Meshkwahkihaki
Native to	United States, Mexico
Region	Central Oklahoma, Northeastern Kansas, Iowa, and Coahuila
Ethnicity	760 Meskwaki and Sauk and 820 Kickapoo in the US (2000 census)^[1] and 423 Mexican Kickapoo (2010 census)^[2]
Native speakers	700: 250 Sauk and Fox and 400 Kickapoo in the US (2007–2015)^[1] 60 Kickapoo in Mexico (2020 census)^[3]
Language family	Algic Algonquian Fox
Dialects	Fox Sauk Kickapoo
Writing system	Latin, Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: `sac` – Fox and Sauk `kic` – Kickapoo
Linguist List	`qes` Mascouten
Glottolog	`foxx1245`
ELP	Sauk-Fox
Map showing the distribution of Oklahoma Indian Languages
Kickapoo is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.