Winnebago language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Winnebago Hocąk |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | United States | |
| Region: | Wisconsin | |
| Total speakers: | 230 | |
| Language family: | Siouan-Catawban Siouan Mississippi Valley Chiwere-Winnebago Winnebago |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | sio | |
| ISO 639-3: | win | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Winnebago language is the language of Ho Chunk (or Winnebago) tribe of Native Americans in the United States. The language is part of the Siouan language family, and is closely related to the languages of the Iowa, Missouri, and Oto. The language can be written using the "Pa-Pe-Pi-Po" syllabics, although as of 1994 the official orthography of the Ho-Chunk Nation is an adaptation of the Roman alphabet. Although the language is highly endangered, there are currently vigorous efforts underway to keep it alive, primarily through the Hocąk Wazija Haci Language Division.
[edit] Phonology
| Oral vowels | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a | ||
| Nasal vowels | Front | Central | Back |
| Close | ĩ | ũ | |
| Open | ã | ||
| Consonants | Bilabial | Labiovelar | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p b | d | k g | ʔ | |||
| Affricate | ʧ ʤ | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Fricative | s z | ʃ ʒ | x ɣ | h | |||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Approximant | w | j |
[edit] Orthography
The current official orthography derives from an Americanist version of the International Phonetic Alphabet. As such its graphemes broadly resemble those of IPA, and there is a close one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes.
Winnebago orthography differs from IPA in that the nasal vowels are indicated using an ogonek, thus į, ų, ą (respectively /ĩ/, /ũ/, /ã/). Furthermore, the postalveolar and palatal consonants are written as c, j, š, ž, and y (respectively IPA /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ and /j/) – the last three being the norm in Americanist phonetic notation. More unusually, t represents /d/, while ǧ represents IPA /ɣ/. Finally, the glottal stop is represented by ʼ (known in Winnebago as hiyuša jikere).
