Extinct language isolate of the Mississippi Valley
Tunica
Luhchi Yoroni
Native to
United States
Region
Central Louisiana
Extinct
Extinct as a first language on December 6, 1948 with the death of Sesostrie Youchigant[1]
Revival
60 L2 speakers (2023)[1]
Language family
Language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-3
tun
Glottolog
tuni1252
ELP
Tunica
Pre-contact distribution of the Tunica language.
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The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni (or Tonica, or less common form Yuron)[2] language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples. There are no native speakers of the Tunica language, but as of 2017[update], there are 32 second language speakers.[1]
Tunica-Biloxi tribal member William Ely Johnson worked with Swiss ethnologist Albert Gatschet to help him document the language in 1886. This initial documentation was further developed by linguist John R. Swanton in the early 1900s.[3]
The last known native speaker, Sesostrie Youchigant, died in 1948. In the 1930s, linguist Mary Haas worked with him to describe what Youchigant remembered of the language, and the description was published in A Grammar of the Tunica Language in 1941. That was followed by Tunica Texts in 1950 and Tunica Dictionary in 1953.
By the 17th century, the people had suffered a high rate of fatalities from Eurasian infectious diseases, warfare, and social disruption. The reduced Tunica tribe lived close to the Ofo and Avoyelles tribes, in present-day Louisiana. They communicated by Mobilian Jargon or French. The small population and the use of a jargon made Haas note that the eventual deterioration of the Tunica language was inevitable.[4]
^ abcTunica at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
^"Language names:T". Archived from the original on 2010-01-13. Retrieved 2010-02-15.
^Swanton, John R. (1921). "The Tunica Language". International Journal of American Linguistics. 2 (1/2): 1–39. doi:10.1086/463732. JSTOR 1263179. S2CID 143814015.
^Haas, Mary R., Tunica, New York: J.J. Augustin Publisher, 1940.
The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni (or Tonica, or less common form Yuron) language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi...
Louisiana Tunica, Louisiana Tunica, Mississippi Tunica County, Mississippi Tunica Lake, Lee County, Arkansas and Tunica County, Mississippi Tunica Academy...
Soto expedition. The Tunicalanguage is an isolate. Over the next centuries, under pressure from hostile neighbors, the Tunica migrated south from the...
Julian Granberry (1994) has suggested that the Calusa language was related to the Tunicalanguage of the lower Mississippi River Valley, with Calusa possibly...
other Tunicalanguage–speaking peoples, especially the Tunica, Koroa, and possibly the Tioux. Nothing is definitely known about their language, believed...
a chief of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe and the last known native speaker of the Tunicalanguage. Youchigant was elected chief by the Tunica in 1911. The tribe...
Granberry states that the language of the Calusa, Mayaimi (which he calls Guacata) and Tequesta people is related to the Tunicalanguage. The current name, Okeechobee...
A tunica molesta (Latin for "annoying shirt") was a tunic impregnated with pitch and other flammable substances such as naphtha or resin. This was put...
Other languages use verbal morphology, such as the -n verbal postfix in the Tunicalanguage. Of the languages examined in the World Atlas of Language Structures...
postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term voiceless postalveolar...
359]. Harvey, Megan Anna (2023). Documenting Reawakening Languages: A Case Study of Tunica (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Arizona. pp. 50, 114–115...
with four language isolates: Natchez, Tunica, Atakapa, and (possibly) Chitimacha. Gulf was proposed as a language family by Mary Haas (Haas 1951, 1952)...
dissertation titled A Grammar of the TunicaLanguage. In the 1930s, Haas worked with the last native speaker of Tunica, Sesostrie Youchigant, producing extensive...
original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2018-01-23. "TunicaLanguage Project : A collaboration of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and Tulane University"...
the Tequesta probably spoke the same language as the Calusa, which in his analysis relates to the Tunicalanguage. The Tequestas did not practice any form...
may identify as Cajuns or Creoles as well as Chitimacha, Houma, Biloxi, Tunica, Choctaw, Acadians, and French Indian among others. For these reasons, as...
The Tunica treasure is a group of artifacts from the Tunica-Biloxi tribe discovered in the 1960s. Their discovery led to a protracted legal battle over...
main tribes were from different language groups: the Biloxi were Siouan-speaking and the Tunica had an isolate language. Today the tribe members speak...
the proto-Quapaw. But the expedition's chronicler recorded that the Tunicalanguage was used in Pacaha and there is evidence for a later Quapaw migration...
Estonian Language. Archived from the original on 15 June 2023. Retrieved 28 July 2023. Jeffrey P. Brain and Frank W. Porter (1990). The Tunica-Biloxi....
Consciously devised language Endangered language – Language that is at risk of going extinct Ethnologue#Language families Extinct language – Language that no longer...
assimilated with the Tunica and the Siouan-speaking Biloxi. They spoke the Ofo language, generally classified as a Siouan language. According to the 1684...
belonging to both linguistic areas. Gulf languages include Muskogean, Chitimacha, Atakapa, Tunicalanguage, Natchez, Yuchi, Ofo (Siouan), Biloxi (Siouan)...
spoken a dialect of Tunica. However, French missionaries described the Koroa (which they spelled Courouais) as speaking the same language as the Yazoo but...
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