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/.
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
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"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:
^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.
^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.
^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 (ISBN0521583322), page 57
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.
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