Beothuk language

The Beothuk language (/biːˈɒtək/ or /ˈbeɪ.əθʊk/), also called Beothukan, was spoken by the indigenous Beothuk people of Newfoundland. The Beothuk have been extinct since 1829 and there are few written accounts of their language, so little is known about it.

Beothuk is known only from four word lists written down in the 18th and 19th centuries. They contain more than 400 words but no examples of connected speech. However, a lack of any systematic or consistent representation of the vocabulary in the wordlists makes it daunting to establish what the sound system of Beothuk was, and words listed separately on the lists may be the same word transcribed in sundry ways. Moreover, the lists are known to have many mistakes. This, along with the lack of connected speech leaves little upon which to build any reconstruction of Beothuk. Claims of links with the neighbouring Algonquian language family date back at least to Robert Latham in 1862; from 1968 onwards John Hewson has put forth evidence of sound correspondences and shared morphology with Proto-Algonquian and other better-documented Algonquian languages, though if valid Beothuk would be an extremely divergent member of the family. Other researchers claimed that proposed similarities are more likely the result of borrowing rather than cognates. The limited and poor nature of the documentation means there is not enough evidence to draw strong conclusions. Owing of this overall lack of meaningful evidence, Ives Goddard and Lyle Campbell claim that any connections between Beothuk and Algonquian are unknown and likely unknowable.

Beothuk

The Beothuk (/biːˈɒtək/ or /ˈbeɪ.əθʊk/; also spelled Beothuck) were an indigenous people based on the island of Newfoundland.

Beginning around AD 1500, the Beothuk culture formed. This appeared to be the most recent cultural manifestation of peoples who first migrated from Labrador to present-day Newfoundland around AD 1. The ancestors of this group had three earlier cultural phases, each lasting approximately 500 years.

In 2007 DNA testing was conducted on material from the teeth of Demasduit and her husband Nonosabasut, two Beothuk individuals who had died in the 1820s. The results suggest the Beothuk were linked to the same ancestral people as the Mi'kmaq, either through mixing of the populations or through a common ancestor. It also demonstrated they were solely of First Nation indigenous ancestry, unlike some earlier studies that suggested European admixture.

The Beothuk lived throughout the island of Newfoundland, particularly in the Notre Dame and Bonavista Bay areas. Estimates vary as to the number of Beothuk at the time of contact with Europeans. Scholars of the 19th and early 20th century estimated about 2,000 individuals at the time of European contact in the 15th century. Recent scholarship suggests there may have been no more than 500 to 700 people. They lived in independent, self-sufficient, extended family groups of 30 to 55 people.