Ofo language

Ofo
Native to	United States
Region	Mississippi
Extinct	1997 (last speaker was Thomas Darko)
Language family	Siouan Western Siouan Ohio Valley Siouan Ofo–Biloxi Ofo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ofo

The Ofo language was a language spoken by the Mosopelea tribe who lived until c. 1673 in what is now Ohio along the Ohio River, at which time they moved down the Mississippi River to Mississippi, near the Natchez, and thence to Louisiana, near the Tunica.

It was sometimes suspected that the Ofo language was Muskogean. But in 1908, anthropologist John R. Swanton discovered an aged female speaker living among the Tunica who had spoken Ofo since childhood. He obtained a vocabulary of the language, and quickly established that it was in fact Siouan, and similar to Biloxi.

Sources

• Holmer, Nils, M., An Ofo Phonetic Law, International Journal of American Linguistics, 13:1, 1947.
• Moseley, Christopher and R. E. Asher, ed. Atlas of the Worlds Languages (New York:Routelege, 1994) Map 5

External links

• Ofo on Native Languages
• The Ofo Language of Louisiana