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Beothuk |
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The Beothuk language, also called Beothukan, was spoken by the indigenous Beothuk people of Newfoundland. The Beothuk have
been extinct since 1829 and there are few written accounts of their language, so little is known about it. There have been
claims of links with the neighbouring Algonquian language family but there is not enough evidence to draw strong conclusions.
In 2007 DNA studies showed genetic links between the Beothuk people and Algonquian-speaking Mi'kmaq. Beothuk is known only
from four word lists written down in the 18th and 19th centuries. They carry over 400 words but no examples of connected speech.
Claims of Beothuk's link with Algonquian languages date back at least to Robert Latham in 1862. From 1968 onwards John Hewson
has put forth evidence of sound correspondences and shared morphology with Proto-Algonquian. However, a lack of any systematic
or consistent representation of the vocabulary in the wordlists makes it daunting to establish what the sound system of Beothuk
was, and words listed separately on the lists may be the same word transcribed in sundry ways. Moreover, the lists are known
to have many mistakes. This, along with the lack of connected speech leaves little upon which to build any reconstruction
of Beothuk. Owing of this overall lack of meaningful evidence, Ives Goddard and Lyle Campbell claim that any connections between
Beothuk and Algonquian are unknown and likely unknowable. In 1910 American anthropologist Frank Speck recorded a seventy-five-year-old
native woman named Santu Toney singing a song purported to be in the Beothuk language. The recording resurfaced at the very
end of the twentieth century. Some sources give the year 1929, but the 1910 date is confirmed in Speck's book Beothuk and
Micmac (New York 1922, p. 67). The words are hard to hear and not understood. Santu said she had been taught the song by
her father (which may be evidence that one person with a Beothuk connection was alive after the death of Shanawdithit in 1829,
given Santu Toney was born about 1835). Contemporary researchers have tried to make a transcription of the song along with
hoping to clean up the recording with modern methods. Native groups have learned the song. Mr. James P. Howley, Director of
the Geological Survey of Newfoundland, who for more than forty years was interested in the history of the Beothuk, doubted
(in 1914) the truthfulness of Santu Toney. |
Names (more)[br] Beotukeg[en] Beothuk language [eu] Beothuk hizkuntza [fr] Béothuk [ko] 베오투크어 [nl] Beothuk [no] Beothuk [ru] Беотук [es] Idioma beothuk |
Language type : Extinct
Technical notes
This page is providing structured data for the language Beothuk. |
ISO 639 CodesISO 639-3 : bueLinked Data URIshttp://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/buehttp://dbpedia.org/resource/ISO_639:bue More URIs at sameas.org SourcesAuthority documentation for ISO 639 identifier: bueFreebase ISO 639-3 : bue GeoNames.org Country Information Publications Office of the European Union Metadata Registry : Countries and Languages |