Loup is an extinct Algonquian language, or possibly group of languages, spoken in colonial New England. Loup ('Wolf') was a French colonial ethnographic term, and usage was inconsistent. In modern literature, it refers to two varieties, Loup A and Loup B.[1]
Loup | |
---|---|
Pronunciation | [lu] |
Native to | United States |
Region | Massachusetts, Connecticut |
Ethnicity | Nipmuck? |
Extinct | 18th century |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | Either:xlo – Loup Axlb – Loup B |
xlo Loup A | |
xlb Loup B | |
Glottolog | loup1243 Nipmuckloup1245 Loup B |
Loup A, which may be the language of the Nipmuck, is principally attested from a word list recorded from refugees by the St. Francis mission to the Abenaki in Quebec. The descendants of these refugees became speakers of Western Abenaki in the eighteenth century. Loup B refers to a second word list, which shows extensive dialectal variation. This may not be a distinct language, but just notes on the speech of various New England Algonquian refugees in French missions.[2]
The phonology of Loup A (Nipmuck), reconstructed by Gustafson 2000:
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal/ Postalveolar |
Velar | Glottal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | pal. | plain | lab. | ||||
Nasal | m | n | |||||
Plosive | p | t | tʲ | k | (kʷ) | ||
Affricate | tʃ | ||||||
Fricative | s | h | |||||
Lateral | l | ||||||
Approximant | w | j |
Front | Back | |
---|---|---|
Close | i, iː | u |
Mid | e | o, oː |
Open | a, aː, ã |
The vowel sounds likely have the same phonetic quality as other southern New England Algonquian languages. The short vowels /i o e a/ may represent the sounds as [ɪ], [ʊ], [ɛ,ə], and [ʌ], while the long vowels /iː/, /oː/, and /ã/ correspond to /i/, /o/, and /ã/.[3][4]