Tuscarora or Skarure is an Iroquoian language of the Tuscarora people, spoken in Canada and the United States, in western New York and southern Ontario. The original homeland of the Tuscarora was in North Carolina.

Phonology

Vowels

Tuscarora apparently has eight oral vowels, , and two nasal vowels, . Nasal vowels are customarily indicated with an ogonek, long vowels with a following colon, <:>, and (which may actually be /æ/) with .

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Tuscarora is quite small, with plosives , fricatives , nasal /n/, and resonants /r w j/. There may also be the phonemes /b/ and /f/, although they probably occur only in loan words. is commonly spelled <č>. /j/ is spelled . The combination /sj/ becomes phonetically the postalveolar fricative .

Bibliography

• Rudes, Blair A. (1999). Tuscarora-English / English-Tuscarora Dictionary. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
• Rudes, Blair A., and Dorothy Crouse (1987). The Tuscarora Legacy of J. N. B. Hewitt: Materials for the Study of Tuscarora Language and Culture. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Mercury Series, Canadian Ethnology Service Paper No. 108.

See also

• Tuscarora (tribe)

External links

• Language Geek: Tuscarora
• Tuscarora Language at the Tuscarora School
• Ethnologue Report on Tuscarora

Languages of Canada | Iroquoian languages | Languages of the United States | Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast