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Karankawa

North American Language Families

Karankawa is the extinct, unclassified language of the Karankawa people of the Texas Gulf coast, who moved seasonally between the mainland and barrier islands. It was not closely related to other languages documented in the region, many of which are themselves poorly attested, and may have been a language isolate. Only a couple hundred words survive, recorded in 1698, 1720 and 1828, with three further wordlists collected in the 1880s from non-Karankawa people who remembered some vocabulary.

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