Appendix:Beothuk word list

Beothuk word list:^[1]

Beothuk is known only from several wordlists from the 18th and the 19th centuries by George C. Pulling (1792),^[2] Rev. John Clinch, Rev. John Leigh, and Hercules Robinson (1834).^[3] They contain more than 400 words that had been collected from speakers such as Oubee, Demasduwit, and Shanawdithit, but there were no examples of connected speech. Wordlists had also been collected by W. E. Cormack (who worked with Shanawdithit), Richard King (whose wordlist had been passed onto Robert Gordon Latham^[4]), and James P. Howley (1915)^[5] (who worked with Jure, a widow from the islands of the Bay of Exploits).^[1]

The lack of any systematic or consistent representation of the vocabulary in the wordlists makes it daunting to establish the sound system of Beothuk, and words that are listed separately on the lists may be the same word transcribed in different ways. Moreover, the lists are known to have many mistakes. That, along with the lack of connected speech leaves little upon which to build any reconstruction of Beothuk.

The wordlists have been transcribed and analyzed in Hewson (1978). The combined Beothuk wordlists below have been reproduced from Hewson (1978: 149-167).^[1]

Numerals in Beothuk:^[1]

Months in Beothuk:^[1]