Tuscarora (langue)

Tuscarora, sometimes called Skarò ̇rə̨ˀ, was the Iroquoian language of the Tuscarora people, spoken in southern Ontario, Canada, North Carolina and northwestern New York around Niagara Falls, in the United States, before becoming extinct in late 2020. The historic homeland of the Tuscarora was in eastern North Carolina, in and around the Goldsboro, Kinston, and Smithfield areas. The name Tuscarora (ˌtʌskəˈroʊrə ) means "hemp people," after the Indian hemp or milkweed, which they use in many aspects of their society. Skarureh refers to the long shirt worn as part of the men's regalia, and so the name literally means "long shirt people." Tuscarora is recently extinct, the last fluent first language speaker having died in 2020. In the mid-1970s, 50 people spoke it on the Tuscarora Reservation (Lewiston, New York) and the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation (near Brantford, Ontario). The Tuscarora School in Lewiston has striven to keep Tuscarora alive as a heritage language by teaching children from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade. The language can appear complex to those unfamiliar with it more in terms of its grammar than its sound system. Many ideas can be expressed in a single word. Most words involve several components that must be considered. The language is written using mostly symbols from the Roman alphabet, with some variations, additions, and diacritics. Tuscarora has four oral vowels, one nasal vowel, and one diphthong. The vowels can be either short or long, which makes a total of eight oral vowels, /i ɛ ɔ u iː ɛː ɔː uː/, and two nasal vowels, /ə̃ ə̃ː/. Nasal vowels are indicated with an ogonek, long vowels with either a following colon or an interpunct , and stressed vowels are marked with an acute accent . The pronunciation of unstressed short vowels varies between dialects, as shown in the following tables: Thus in the official writing system of Tuscarora, the vowels are a e í u ę. The marginal phonemes ą and o occur in loanwords.