MultiTree:

Name: Cayuga Type: Language Spoken in: USA, Canada Number of speakers: 50 in Canada (2002 M. Foster). Population total all countries: 60. Ethnic population: 3,000 (1997 Mithun, Foster, Michelson per A. Yamamoto) (Ethnologue) Number of speakers: 60 (World Oral Literature Project) Code: cay Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Families: Iroquoian Parent Subgroup: Iroquois Proper; Five Nations Iroquois (lptd) Brief Description: "Cayuga is a Northern Iroquoian language, originally spoken by a tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy (Six Nations) situated west of the Onondagas and east of the Senecas, between Cayuga and Owasco Lakes. After the American Revolution many of the Cayugas fled to Canada, where their modern descendants make up part of the population of the Six Nations Reserve at Grand River, Ontario. There are about 100 first-language speakers of Cayuga in Ontario, the youngest around 40 years of age. Other Cayugas joined the Seneca, where their language was gradually replaced by Seneca, and yet others moved westward with other Iroquois, eventually settling in northeastern Oklahoma. A dialect of Cayuga was spoken in Oklahoma as late as the 1980s but is now apparently extinct." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 11-12

Endangerment Status

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UNESCO Status: Extinct Ethnologue Status: Not listed Sutherland's Red List: Critically Endangered