The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni (or Tonica, or less common form Yuron)[2] language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples.

[1] Tunica-Biloxi tribal member William Ely Johnson worked with Swiss ethnologist Albert Gatschet to help him document the language in 1886.

This initial documentation was further developed by linguist John R. Swanton in the early 1900s.

By the 17th century, the people had suffered a high rate of fatalities from Eurasian infectious diseases, warfare, and social disruption.

The small population and the use of a jargon made Haas note that the eventual deterioration of the Tunica language was inevitable.

[4] Although Tunica is usually classified as a language isolate,[5] Granberry (1994) suggested that Tunica was related to Calusa, with Calusa possibly being relatively a recent arrival from the lower Mississippi region.

Another possibility was that similarities between the languages were derived from long-term mutual contact.

[7] Tribal members read from a new children's book in Tunica at a 2010 pow wow.

[8] Only about half of the tribal members live within 75 miles (121 km) of the reservation, in Avoyelles Parish.

The transcription style (represented in bolded symbols below) is based on Mary Haas' work Tunica Language.

The fricatives /s/ and /š/ are pronounced with a stronger hiss than in English, and /ʔ/ is said to have a very strong closure.

Elsewhere in the phrase, the tone is like a low melody: lɔ'ta wiwa'nǎn "Do you want to run?"

More specific information and basic examples are detailed below: The morphology of Tunica is as follows.

Determinative nouns are definitive, non-definitive, and locative, which may be distinguished by different prefixes or suffixes.

The articular prefix is similar to the definite article in English and appears as ta'- before all stems not beginning with /ʔ/ or /t/.

-ši is the most commonly used locative suffix, and its meaning is comparable to the English "in, into" or "on, over," but in Tunica, it is used as "at, to."

There are three types of sentences that the Tunica language produces: simple, compound, and complex.

For example, ta'čɔhak ʔu'rǐhč, hi'yuhɔ'nì "The chief's house was (made of) grass" (ta'čɔhaku "the chief", possessor noun, + ʔu'rihči "his house", alienably possessed noun, the combination serving as independent subject).

There are certain rules that are observed to form sentences in the correct order: There are also certain rules in the order of clauses: Noun can belong to one of the following gender-number classes: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine dual, feminine dual, masculine plural, or feminine plural.

There are three positions that are available and that encompass every noun in the Tunica language: horizontal, squatting, and vertical.

Smaller non-human animates, like frogs and birds, always take the squatting position.

The preverbs are often used with active verb predicative words: There are many postfixes, which express different meanings like certain tenses and negation.

Quantificatives include numerals and others like ho'tu "all, everything," na'mu "many, much," ka'šku "a few, a little bit," ka'škuto'hku "several, quite a few," and ʔa'mari "enough."

Comparatives can be used as modifiers of adjectives, static verbs, adverbs, nouns, or quantificative na'mu.

Finite verbs take subjective pronominal referentials and are predicative words.