Sauk language

Last updated
Sauk
Native to United States
RegionCentral Oklahoma
Ethnicity Sauk people
Native speakers
5 [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 sac
Glottolog mesk1242   Meskwaki
sacc1239   Sac

Sauk is either a dialect of the Fox language or a distinct language, one of the many Algonquian languages. It is very closely related to the dialects spoken by the Meskwaki and the Kickapoo tribes. Each of the dialects contains archaisms and innovations that distinguish them from each other. Sauk and Meskwaki appear to be the most closely related of the three, reflecting the peoples' long relationship. [2] Sauk is considered to be mutually intelligible, to a point, with Meskawaki.

Contents

In their own language, the Sauk at one time called themselves asakiwaki [a-'sak-i-wa-ki], "people of the outlet". [3] The Sauk people have a syllabic orthography for their language. They published a Primer Book in 1975, [4] based on a "traditional" syllabary that existed in 1906. It is intended to help modern-day Sauk to learn to write and speak their ancestral tongue. A newer orthography was proposed around 1994 to aid in language revival. The former syllabary was aimed at remaining native speakers of Sauk; the more recent orthography was developed for native English speakers, as many Sauk grow up with English as their first language. [5]

Today, only five elders fluently speak Sauk. [1] With so few speakers, Sauk is considered an endangered language, as are many other Indigenous languages in North America.

In 2005, A Concise Dictionary of the Sauk Language was published using the Algonquianist Standard Roman Orthography. [6]

In 2012, Shawnee High School in Shawnee, Oklahoma, began to offer a Sauk language course. [7]

Endangerment

The use of Sauk was actively discouraged and frequently punished in boarding schools during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It rapidly declined as a language used in everyday communication between the years 1935 and 1945. Nowadays, the main language of the Sauk is English and only a few elders know Sauk. [5]

A conflict for the preservation of the language, is that the original syllabary created was intended for the use of native Sauk speakers, and its clarification was designed from the Sauk language. This is a problem because this is no longer as helpful for the majority of the Sac and Fox nation, as the official tribe language today is English. The issue arises in instances when Sauk is being taught to a school in the tribe, and an elder, who is fluent in the language, disagrees with the pronunciation being taught.[ citation needed ]

Phonology

Sauk does not have many phonemes in comparison to many other languages: four vowels, two semivowels, and nine consonants.

Consonants

The following consonant phonemes are given in Reinschmidt (1995): [5]

Consonant phonemes
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop p t k
Fricative θ ( s ) ʃ h
Nasal m n
Approximant j w

/ʃ/ is primarily heard as [ ʃ ], but may also alternate as [ s ] among speakers in free variation.

The representation of /h/ was omitted in the 1977 syllabary. It was added back in later editions because it is phonemic in the Sauk language.[ citation needed ]

Reinschmidt symbolizes /j/ as y, following Americanist practice. [5]

All four stops have at least two allophones each, one fortis and one lenis:[ citation needed ]

  • /p/[p,hp]
  • /t/[t,ht]
  • /t͡ʃ/[t͡ʃ,ht͡ʃ]
  • /k/[k,hk]

Vowels

Sauk vowel phonemes [5]
Front Back
unrounded rounded
High i o
Mid ɛ
Low ɑ

Vowel length is distinctive in its function. Long vowels are often distinguished orthographically by the doubling of characters, such as a/aa representing two different spoken lengths. This is different for the vowel e, as a lengthened version of this vowel shares the sound of the vowel in the English word bear.[ vague ] Reinschmidt presents four vowels, each with two allophones: [5]

  • /ɑ/[ɑ,ɑː]
  • /ɛ/[ɛ,ɛː]
  • /i/[i,iː]
  • /o/[o,oː]

Pitch and tone

Pitch and tone are important when speaking Sauk, as there is a general rule of emphasizing the first or second syllable of phrases, and slowly fades away by the end of a word. The Sauk language is perceived as having a "swallowed" quality when referring to the ends of phrases and words, so pitch, tone and intonation is a concept that would come from learning the language as opposed to studying the syllabary.[ citation needed ]

Syllables

Both the Sauk and Fox languages are known for "swallowing" syllables in word-final position, which can make identification of individual sounds more difficult for the language learner.[ citation needed ]

Morphology

Sauk is a polysynthetic language. Because this can easily pose great difficulties to learners with little to no experience with highly synthetic languages, [8] [9] [5] the Sauk orthography has words written by identifying each syllable.[ clarification needed ]

Samples

Two samples of written Sauk language, as they appear in Reinschmidt 1995: [5]

Ho! Ne nu ta ma

'Hi! I speak Sauk!'

Ni swi me cli ke a ki a la se te ke wa ki a la te ki ki e ka ta wi ke mi yak i e we li ke mi ya ki ne ko ti me cle ke a e cla gwe ne mo tti wi ne li wi tti cle we na li ta ske wa ne li se ke

'Two turtles were sunning on a bank when a thunderstorm approached. When it began to rain, one turtle said to the other, 'I don't want to get wet,' and jumped into the lake.'

Related Research Articles

In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or morae which make up words.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sauk people</span> Indigenous people from the Northeastern Woodlands, U.S.

The Sauk or Sac are Native Americans and Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their historical territory was near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Today they have three tribes based in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Their federally recognized tribes are:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cherokee language</span> Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people

Cherokee or Tsalagi is an endangered-to-moribund Iroquoian language and the native language of the Cherokee people. Ethnologue states that there were 1,520 Cherokee speakers out of 376,000 Cherokees in 2018, while a tally by the three Cherokee tribes in 2019 recorded about 2,100 speakers. The number of speakers is in decline. The Tahlequah Daily Press reported in 2019 that most speakers are elderly, about eight fluent speakers die each month, and that only five people under the age of 50 are fluent. The dialect of Cherokee in Oklahoma is "definitely endangered", and the one in North Carolina is "severely endangered" according to UNESCO. The Lower dialect, formerly spoken on the South Carolina–Georgia border, has been extinct since about 1900. The dire situation regarding the future of the two remaining dialects prompted the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a state of emergency in June 2019, with a call to enhance revitalization efforts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Algonquin language</span> Distinct Algonquian-Ojibwe language of Ontario and Quebec

Algonquin is either a distinct Algonquian language closely related to the Ojibwe language or a particularly divergent Ojibwe dialect. It is spoken, alongside French and to some extent English, by the Algonquin First Nations of Quebec and Ontario. As of 2006, there were 2,680 Algonquin speakers, less than 10% of whom were monolingual. Algonquin is the language for which the entire Algonquian language subgroup is named; the similarity among the names often causes considerable confusion. Like many Native American languages, it is strongly verb-based, with most meaning being incorporated into verbs instead of using separate words for prepositions, tense, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wyandot language</span> Iroquoian language

Wyandot is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known as Wyandot or Wyandotte, descended from the Tionontati. It is considered a sister to the Wendat language, spoken by descendants of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy. It was last spoken, before its revival, by members located primarily in Oklahoma, United States, and Quebec, Canada. Linguists have traditionally considered Wyandot as a dialect or modern form of Wendat, even though the two are no longer mutually intelligible.

The Sac and Fox Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) Indian peoples. They are based in central Oklahoma.

English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caddo language</span> Endangered language of the southern US

Caddo is a Native American language, the traditional language of the Caddo Nation. It is critically endangered, with no exclusively Caddo-speaking community and as of 2023 only two speakers who had acquired the language as children outside school instruction, down from 25 speakers in 1997. Caddo has several mutually intelligible dialects. The most commonly used dialects are Hasinai and Hainai; others include Kadohadacho, Natchitoches and Yatasi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meskwaki</span> Indigenous people of North America

The Meskwaki, 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, the Meskwaki call themselves Meshkwahkihaki, which means "the Red-Earths", related to their creation story.

The Japanese Sign Language syllabary is a system of manual kana used as part of Japanese Sign Language (JSL). It is a signary of 45 signs and 4 diacritics representing the phonetic syllables of the Japanese language. Signs are distinguished both in the direction they point, and in whether the palm faces the viewer or the signer. For example, the manual syllables na, ni, ha are all made with the first two fingers of the hand extended straight, but for na the fingers point down, for ni across the body, and for ha toward the viewer. The signs for te and ho are both an open flat hand, but in te the palm faces the viewer, and in ho it faces away.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unami language</span> Language spoken by the Lenape people

Unami is an Algonquian language initially spoken by the Lenape people in the late 17th century and the early 18th century, in the southern two-thirds of present-day New Jersey, southeastern Pennsylvania, and the northern two-thirds of Delaware. The Lenape later migrated, largely settling in Ontario, Canada and Oklahoma. Today, it is only spoken as a second language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plains Cree language</span> Algonquian language spoken in North America

Plains Cree is a dialect of the Algonquian language, Cree, which is the most populous Canadian indigenous language. Plains Cree is considered a dialect of the Cree-Montagnais language or a dialect of the Cree language that is distinct from the Montagnais language. Plains Cree is one of five main dialects of Cree in this second sense, along with Woods Cree, Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and Atikamekw. Although no single dialect of Cree is favored over another, Plains Cree is the one that is the most widely used. Out of the 116,500 speakers of the Cree language, the Plains Cree dialect is spoken by about 34,000 people primarily in Saskatchewan and Alberta but also in Manitoba and Montana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shawnee language</span> Central Algonquian language

The Shawnee language is a Central Algonquian language, spoken in parts of central and northeastern Oklahoma by the Shawnee people. Historically, it was spoken across a wide region of the Eastern United States, primarily north of the Ohio River. This territory included areas within present-day Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.

Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics is a writing system for several Algonquian languages that emerged during the nineteenth century and whose existence was first noted in 1880. It was originally used near the Great Lakes: Fox, Sac, and Kickapoo, in addition to Potawatomi. Use of the script was subsequently extended to the Siouan language Ho-Chunk. Use of the Great Lakes script has also been attributed to speakers of the Ottawa dialect of the Ojibwe language, but supporting evidence is weak.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fox language</span> Algonquian language spoken in US Midwest and northern Mexico

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ojibwe writing systems</span> Writing system

Ojibwe is an indigenous language of North America from the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is one of the largest Native American languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers and is characterized by a series of dialects, some of which differ significantly. The dialects of Ojibwe are spoken in Canada from southwestern Quebec, through Ontario, Manitoba and parts of Saskatchewan, with outlying communities in Alberta and British Columbia, and in the United States from Michigan through Wisconsin and Minnesota, with a number of communities in North Dakota and Montana, as well as migrant groups in Kansas and Oklahoma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kickapoo language</span> Dialect of the Fox language

Kickapoo is either a dialect of the Fox language or a closely related language, closely related to, and mutually intelligible with, the dialects spoken by the Sauk people and Meskwaki people. Their language is included in the Central Algonquian languages subgroup of the Algonquian languages family, itself a member of the Algic languages family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aguaruna language</span> Chicham language of Peru

Aguaruna is an indigenous American language of the Chicham family spoken by the Aguaruna people in Northern Peru. According to Ethnologue, based on the 2007 Census, 53,400 people out of the 55,700 ethnic group speak Aguaruna, making up almost the entire population. It is used vigorously in all domains of life, both written and oral. It is written with the Latin script. The literacy rate in Aguaruna is 60–90%. However, there are few monolingual speakers today; nearly all speakers also speak Spanish. The school system begins with Aguaruna, and as the students progress, Spanish is gradually added. There is a positive outlook and connotation in regard to bilingualism. 50 to 75% of the Aguaruna population are literate in Spanish. A modest dictionary of the language has been published.

This article covers the phonology of the Uyghur language. Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region features both vowel harmony and vowel reduction.

The phonology of the Massachusett language was re-introduced to the Mashpee, Aquinnah, Herring Pond and Assonet tribes that participate in the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, co-founded by Jessie Little Doe Baird in 1993. The phonology is based regular sound changes that took place in the development of Proto-Eastern Algonquian from Proto-Algonquian, as well as cues in the colonial orthography regarding pronunciation, as the writing system was based on English pronunciation and spelling conventions in use at the time, keeping in mind differences in late seventeenth century English versus today. Other resources included information from extant Algonquian languages with native speakers.

References

  1. 1 2 "Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma Sauk Language Department". Our Mother Tongues. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  2. Goddard, Ives. "Central Algonquin languages". In Sturtevant, William C.; Trigger, Bruce G. (eds.). Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15: Northeast. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 583–587.
  3. Bonvillain, Nancy (1995). The Sac and Fox. Chelsea House Publishers. pp. 13, 17. ISBN   978-0-7910-1684-8. Archived from the original on December 3, 2022. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
  4. McCormick, Mary F., ed. (1975). Sac and Fox Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma Primer Book Sac and Fox Language.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Reinschmidt, Kerstin Müller (1995). "Language Preservation with the Help of Written Language: The Sauk Language of the Sac and Fox of Oklahoma". Papers of the Twenty-Sixth Algonquin Conference: 413–30. ISSN   0831-5671. Archived from the original on March 20, 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  6. Whittaker, Gordon (2005). A Concise Dictionary of the Sauk Language (PDF). The Sac & Fox National Public Library.
  7. Carmen Bourlon (11 August 2012). "Shawnee High School to offer new course on endangered Sauk language". The Shawnee News-Star. Shawnee, OK. Archived from the original on 29 January 2013.
  8. Sorensen, Barbara; Weston, Jennifer (December 5, 2011). "I love Sauk Language". Cultural Survival. Archived from the original on March 17, 2017. Retrieved 2017-03-16.
  9. "Mesquakie-Sauk Pronunciation Guide, Alphabet and Phonology (Sac and Fox)". www.native-languages.org. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved 2017-03-16.