Cayuga language

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Cayuga Goyogohó:nǫ’
Spoken in:	Canada
Region:	Six Nations Reserve, Ontario
Total speakers:	99 (Mithun 1999)
Language family:	Iroquoian Northern Iroquoian Lake Iroquoian Iroquois Proper Seneca-Cayuga Cayuga
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`iro`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`cay`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Cayuga (In Cayuga Goyogohó:nǫ’) is a Northern Iroquoian language of the Iroquois Proper (also known as "Five Nations Iroquois") subfamily, and is spoken in Six Nations, Ontario by around 100 people.

1 Dialects
2 Sounds
- 2.1 Vowels
- 2.2 Consonants
3 References
4 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] Sounds

[edit] 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	Central	Oral	Nasal
Close	/i/ /iː/
Mid	/e/ /eː/	/ẽ/ /ẽː/		/o/ /oː/	/ɔ̃/ /ɔ̃ː/
Open			/a/ /aː/

[edit] 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.