Taensa language

The Taensa language was spoken by the Taensa people originally of northeastern Louisiana, and later with historical importance in Alabama. Though poorly documented, it was probably a dialect of the Natchez language. It was also the subject of controversy beginning in 1880–1882, when a French student published a grammar and sample texts of a language that he claimed to be Taensa, though it bore no resemblance to Natchez — these publications are generally considered to be a hoax and the language it described to be invented.

The earliest European reports of the language were from French missionary priests who said that they learned Natchez in order to speak to the Taensa people;^{[not verified in body]} Mooney's summary of the people and missionary efforts describes the Taensa language as a variant of the Natchez.^[1]

A clerical student named Jean Parisot published purported "material of the Taensa language, including papers, songs, a grammar and vocabulary" in Paris in 1880-1882, reports which led to considerable interest on the part of philologists and linguists of the time. Several eminent scholars accepted the materials as genuine, but by 1885, Daniel Garrison Brinton and Julien Vinson had begun arguing that the work was fraudulent. After much debate, the consensus of the field came to be that the work was a hoax.