| Cayuga | ||
|---|---|---|
| Gayogohó:nǫ’ | ||
| Spoken in | Canada | |
| Region | Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation | |
| Total speakers | 100-200 | |
| Language family | Iroquoian
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | iro | |
| ISO 639-3 | cay | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Cayuga (In Cayuga Gayogohó:nǫ’) is a Northern Iroquoian language of the Iroquois Proper (also known as "Five Nations Iroquois") subfamily, and is spoken on Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, by around 100 people.
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Dialects
There were at one time two distinct dialects of Cayuga. One is still spoken in Ontario, the other, called "Seneca-Cayuga," was spoken in Oklahoma until the 1980s.
Sounds
Vowels
Cayuga has 12 vowels, six short and six long. [u] appears as an allophone of /o/.
Vowels can be devoiced allophonically, indicated in the orthography used at Six Nations by underlining them.
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oral | Nasal | Oral | Nasal | ||
| Close | /i/ /iː/ | ||||
| Mid | /e/ /eː/ | /ẽ/ /ẽː/ | /o/ /oː/ | /ɔ̃/ /ɔ̃ː/ | |
| Open | /a/ /aː/ | ||||
Consonants
Cayuga has only ten consonants, with no labials. In the Six Nations orthography, the stops and affricate, which are allophonically voiced before vowels or approximants, are represented with voiced symbols (<d>, <g>, <d>). [f] occurs as an allophone of /s/ between /h/ and /r/, and this is also indicated in the orthography.
| Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | t | k | ʔ | ||
| Affricate | ts | ||||
| Fricative | s | h | |||
| Nasal | n | ||||
| Approximant | r | j | w |
Morphosyntax
It has been claimed Cayuga contains no noun phrases.
References
- Mithun, Marianne. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Further reading
- Henry, Reginald and Marianne Mithun. Watęwayęstanih: A Cayuga Teaching Grammar. Brantford, Ontario: Woodland Indian Cultural Educational Centre. Available online at http://www.mun.ca/cayuga/pubs/grammar/Wadewayensdanih.pdf
- Froman, Frances, Alfred Keye, Lottie Keye and Carrie Dyck. English-Cayuga/Cayuga-English Dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.
External links
- Cayuga: Our Oral Legacy (COOL)
- Cayuga at LanguageGeek
- Ohwęjagehká: Ha’degaénage: Cayuga
- Sgę́nǫ’ Gahnawiyo’geh! - How to say "hello" in Cayuga
- "School fights to revive native Canadian language". Reuters. 2008-02-15. http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1448234720080215. Retrieved 2008-02-16.
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