Nansemond language

Nansemond
Native toUnited States
RegionVirginia
EthnicityNansemond
Eraattested 1901
unclassified (Algonquian?)
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)

The Nansemond language is an extinct language that was spoken by the Nansemond people of Virginia, United States.

The Nansemond language may have been a member of the Algonquian language family, similar to that of many other Atlantic coastal tribes. However, only six words have been preserved, which are not enough to identify and classify it.[1]

Word list

The six Nansemond words, which may have been corrupted in memory by the time they were written down in 1901, are:[2]

English Nansemond
one nĭkătwĭn
two näkătwĭn
three nikwásăti
four toisíaw’
five mishä́naw
dog marímo

Lexical comparison

Below is a comparison of Nansemond words and selected proto-languages from Zamponi (2024).[3]

language one two three four five dog
Nansemond nĭkătwĭn näkătwĭn nikwásăti toisíaw’ mishäʹnaw marímo
Proto-Algonquian[4] *nekwetwi *nyi·šwi *neʔθwi *nye·wi *nya·θanwi, pale·neθkwi *aθemwa
Proto-Iroquoian (PI)/
Proto-Northern Iroquoian (PNI)[5]		 *õskat (PNI) *tekniːh (PNI) *ahsẽh (PNI) *kajeɹi (PNI) *hwihsk (PI) *kiːɹ (PI)
Proto-Siouan[6] *rų·sa *rų́·pa *rá·wrį *tó·pa *kiSų́· *wašų́ke/*wišų́·ke

See also

References

  1. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-12-31. Retrieved 2018-12-31.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ^ A Vocabulary of Powhatan, compiled by Captain John Smith, with two word-lists of Pamunkey and Nansemond from other sources. Evolution Publishing, 1997.
  3. ^ Zamponi, Raoul (2024). "Unclassified languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America. De Gruyter. pp. 1627–1648. doi:10.1515/9783110712742-061. ISBN 978-3-11-071274-2.
  4. ^ Hewson, John. 1993. A computer-generated dictionary of Proto-Algonquian. Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization.
  5. ^ Julian, Charles. 2010. A history of the Iroquoian languages. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Ph.D. dissertation.
  6. ^ Rankin, Robert L., Richard T. Carter, A. Wesley Jones, John E. Koontz, David S. Rood & Iren Hartmann (eds.). 2015. Comparative Siouan dictionary. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Accessed 31 January 2023.