Bidai (also spelled Beadeye, Bedias, Bidey, Viday, etc.; autonym: Quasmigdo) is an unclassifiedextinct language formerly spoken by the Bidai people of eastern Texas. Zamponi (2024) notes that the numerals do not appear to be related to those of any other languages and hence proposes that Bidai may be a language isolate.[1]
Word list
Rufus Grimes, a Texan settler in Navasota, Grimes County sent a letter dated November 15, 1887 to Albert S. Gatschet that contained several Bidai words. The word list was published in Gatschet (1891: 39, fn. 2).[1][2]
gloss
Bidai
one
namah
two
nahonde
three
naheestah
four
nashirimah
five
nahot nahonde
six
nashees nahonde
boy
púskus
corn
tándshai
Comparison of numerals
Below is Zamponi's (2024) comparison of Bidai numerals with those of neighboring languages.[1]
^Gatschet, Albert S. 1891. The Karankawa Indians, the coast people of Texas. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology.
^Gatschet, Albert S. & John R. Swanton. 1932. Dictionary of the Atakapa language accompanied by text material. (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 108). Washington: Government Printing Office.
^Grant, Anthony P. 1994. Karankawa linguistic materials. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 19(2). 1–56.
^Hoijer, Harry. 2018. Tonkawa texts: a new linguistic edition. Edited by Thomas R. Wier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
^Chafe, Wallace. 2018. The Caddo language: a grammar, texts, and dictionary based on materials collected by the author in Oklahoma between 1960 and 1970. Petoskey, MI: Mundart Press.
^Grant, Anthony P. 1995. John Sibley’s Adai vocabulary: a contribution to Caddoan lexicography? Paper presented at the 15th annual Siouan and Caddoan Languages Conference, Albuquerque, NM.
^Drechsel, Emanuel J. 1996. An integrated vocabulary of Mobilian Jargon, a native American pidgin of the Mississippi Valley. Anthropological Linguistics 38. 248–354.
^Grant, Anthony P. 1995. "A note on Bidai." European Review of Native American Studies 9:45–47.
† extinct language / ≠ extinct tribe / >< early, obsolete name of Indigenous tribe / ° people absorbed into other tribe(s) / * headquartered in Oklahoma today
