Fox language

The three distinct dialects are:

• Fox or Meskwakiatoweni (Meskwaki language) (also called Mesquakie, Meskwaki)
• Sauk or Thâkiwâtowêweni (Thâkîwaki language) (also rendered Sac), and
• Kickapoo or Kiikaapoa (also rendered Kikapú; considered by some to be a closely related but distinct language).

If Kickapoo is counted as a separate language rather than a dialect of Fox, then only between 200 and 300 speakers of Fox remain. Extinct Mascouten was most likely another dialect, though it is scarcely attested.

Most speakers are elderly or middle-aged, making it highly endangered. The tribal school at the Meskwaki Settlement in Iowa incorporates bilingual education for children. In 2011, the Meskwaki Sewing Project was created, to bring mothers and girls together "with elder women in the Meskwaki Senior Center sewing traditional clothing and learning the Meskwaki language."

Prominent scholars doing research on the language include Ives Goddard, Lucy Thomason of the Smithsonian Institution, and Amy Dahlstrom of the University of Chicago.

Until the early 1900s, Fox was a phonologically very conservative language and preserved many features of Proto-Algonquian; records from the decades immediately following 1900 are particularly useful to Algonquianists for this reason. By the 1960s, however, an extensive progression of phonological changes had taken place, resulting in the loss of intervocalic semivowels and certain other features.

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Fox are given in the table below.

• Other than those involving a consonant plus /j/ or /w/, the only possible consonant cluster is /ʃk/.

Vowels

The Fox language has eight vowel phonemes:

According to A Concise Dictionary of the Sauk Language by Gordon Whittaker, the language's nouns can be divided into animate and inanimate groups. Animate nouns end in -a (ex: tîtîwa /ˈti:.ti:.wa/, "blue jay (bird)"). To pluralise most animate nouns, the ending is transformed from -a to -aki (ex: tîtîwa -> tîtîwaki). The few exceptions that exist have specific forms, according to the Dictionary.

Inanimate nouns typically end in -i (ex: mâtethi /ˈma:.tet.hi/, "knife"). To pluralise most inanimate nouns, the ending is transformed from -i to -ani (ex: mâtethi -> mâtethani). Like the animate nouns, the few exceptions that exist also have specific forms, according to the Dictionary.

Verbs can be divided into transitive and intransitive; transitive involves two parties (i.e "I give it to you!" / "Kemînêwene!"), while intransitive is one party (i.e "You're alive." / "Kepemâtethi.")

This conjugation is only for verbs that end in -amwa; all other animate transitive verbs take the same conjugation as the animate intransitive verbs.

Sauk numerals are as follows:

Besides the Latin script, Fox has been written in two indigenous scripts.

Fox I

"Fox I" is an abugida based on the cursive French alphabet (see Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics). Consonants written by themselves are understood to be syllables containing the vowel /a/. They are:

Vowels are written by adding dots to the consonant:

Fox II

"Fox II" is a consonant-vowel alphabet. According to Coulmas, /p/ is not written (as /a/ is not written in Fox I). Vowels (or /p/ plus a vowel) are written as cross-hatched tally marks.