Susquehannock, also known as Conestoga, is an extinct Iroquoian language spoken by the Native American people variously known as the Susquehannock or Conestoga.
| Susquehannock | |
|---|---|
| Native to | New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia Northeastern United States |
| Ethnicity | Susquehannock |
| Era | attested 1640s |
Iroquoian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | sqn |
sqn | |
| Glottolog | susq1241 |
 Present Day Majority Distribution of the Conestoga Language (Susquehannock) | |
Information about Susquehannock is scant. Almost all known words and phrases come from the Vocabula Mahakuassica, a vocabulary written by the Swedish missionary Johannes Campanius in New Sweden during the 1640s and published by his grandson Thomas Campanius Holm in two separate works in 1696[1] and 1702.[2] Peter Stephen Du Ponceau translated the 1702 work from Swedish to English in 1834.[3][4]
Campanius's vocabulary contains just over 100 words and phrases.[4] Linguist Marianne Mithun believes this limited data is sufficient to classify Susquehannock as a Northern Iroquoian language, closely related to the languages of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.[5] Examples of Susquehannock-language place names include Conestoga, Juniata, and Swatara.
Place names in the Conestoga homeland are documented as of Conestoga origin. After 1763, some Conestoga remnant peoples joined nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Conestoga language survived for a time. Indian Villages and Place Names in Pennsylvania with Numerous Historical Notes and References (1928), a book by Dr. George P. Donehoo identifies place names derived from the Conestoga language.
Notes
References
- "Conestoga Language Living Dictionary". Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-12-23.
- Donehoo, George P. (2014). Indian Villages and Place Names in Pennsylvania: with Numerous Historical Notes and References. Sunbury Press. ISBN 978-1-62006-522-8.
- Holm, Thomas Campanius (2007). Salvucci, Claudio R. (ed.). A Vocabulary of Susquehannock. American Language Reprints. Vol. 2. Translated by Duponceau, Peter Stephen (2nd ed.). Evolution Publishing. ISBN 978-1-889758-85-5.
- Mithun, Marianne (January 1981). "Stalking the Susquehannocks". International Journal of American Linguistics. 47 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1086/465671. JSTOR 1264630. S2CID 144556910.
External links
- Native-languages.org
- Conestoga Language Living Dictionary, hosted on the Living Dictionaries platform: [1]