 the beothuk language ( or ), 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. there have been claims of links with the neighbouring algonquian language family but there is not enough evidence to draw strong conclusions. in 2007 dna studies showed genetic links between the beothuk people and algonquian-speaking mi'kmaq., american journal of physical anthropology 132:594-604, accessed 18 feb 2009 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. claims of beothuk's link with algonquian languages 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. 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. 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. in 1910 american anthropologist frank speck recorded a seventy-five-year-old native woman named santu toney singing a song purported to be in the beothuk language. the recording resurfaced at the very end of the twentieth century. some sources give the year 1929, but the 1910 date is confirmed in speck's book beothuk and
Algonquian_languages Beothuk Extinct_languages_of_North_America First_Nations_languages_in_Canada Indigenous_languages_of_the_North_American_eastern_woodlands Unclassified_languages_of_North_America