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Information about Utian Languages

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Pre-contact distribution of Utian languages


Utian (also Miwok-Costanoan, Mutsun) is a family of indigenous languages spoken in the central and north portion of California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke a language in the Utian linguistic group:

All Utian languages are severely endangered.

Family Division

The Utian family consists of 15 languages (or dialects) with two major branches, Miwokan and Costanoan. The classification below is based primarily on Callaghan (2001). Other classifications list Northern Costanoan, Southern Costanoan, and Karkin as single languages, with the following subgroups of each considered as dialects:

I. Miwokan (a.k.a. Miwok, Miwuk, Moquelumnan) -
A. Eastern Miwok
: 1. Plains Miwok
: 2. Bay Miwok (a.k.a. Saclan) (†) - Bay Miwok is now extinct.
: i. Sierra Miwok
:: 3. Northern Sierra Miwok
:: 4. Central Sierra Miwok
:: 5. Southern Sierra Miwok.
B. Western Miwok
: 6. Coast Miwok (†) - Coast Miwok is now extinct, was probably a single language with two variant dialects.
:: a. Bodega Miwok
:: b. Marin Miwok
: 7. Lake Miwok


II. Ohlone (a.k.a. Costanoan) (†) - The entire Ohlone (Costanoan) family is now extinct. Chochenyo, Tamyen, and Ramaytush were quite similar and were probably a single language with several dialects.

A. Northern Coastanoan (†)
: 8. Chalon (a.k.a. Cholon, Soledad) (†) (?) - Chalon may be a transitional language between Northern and Southern Costanoan.
: 9. Awaswas (a.k.a. Santa Cruz Costanoan) (†) - All the documented speakers of Awaswas were quite different, and so it may not have actually been a single language.
: 10. Tamyen (a.k.a. Tamien, Santa Clara Costanoan) (†)
: 11. Chochenyo (a.k.a. Chocheño, Chocheno, East Bay Costanoan)
: 12. Ramaytush (a.k.a. San Francisco Costanoan)
B. Southern Costanoan (†)
: 13. Mutsun (a.k.a. San Juan Bautista Costanoan) (†)
: 14. Rumsen (a.k.a. Rumsien, San Carlos, Carmel) (†)
C. Karkin
: 15. Karkin (a.k.a. Carquin) (†)

Dialect or language debate

Regarding the eight Costanoan branches, sources differ on if they were eight language dialects, or eight separate languages. Richard Levy contradicts himself on this point: First he says "Costanoans themselves were a set of [small tribes] who spoke a common language... distinguished from one another by slight differences in dialect," however after saying that, he concludes: "The eight branches of the Costanoan family were separate languages (not dialects) as different from one another as Spanish is from French." (Levy, 1978:485, "Language and Territory"). Randall Milliken (1995:24-26) states there were eight dialects, and that the northern dialects Ramaytush, Tamyen, Chochenyo and Karkin might have emerged during the Mission Era. [1]

See also

External links

References

  1. Broadbent, Sylvia. (1964). The Southern Sierra Miwok Language. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 38). Berkeley: University of California Press.
  2. Origin of the word Yosemite (and linked references)
  3. Callaghan, Catherine. (2001). More evidence for Yok-Utian: A reanalysis of the Dixon and Kroeber sets International Journal of American Linguistics, 67 (3), 313-346.
  4. Levy, Richard. 1978. Costanoan, in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 8 (California). William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. ISBN 0-16-004578-9 / 0160045754, pages 485-495.
  5. Milliken, Randall. A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1910. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication, 1995. ISBN 0-87919-132-5 (alk. paper)
  6. Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
  7. Teixeira, Lauren. The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area, A Research Guide. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication, 1997. ISBN 0-87919-141-4.

Notes

1. ^ For the names of the languages, see Levy 1978:485; Teixeira 1997:33-34; and Milliken 1995:24-26. The latter two both cite Levy 1978:485 as their source. For the dialect argument and amalgamation, refer to Milliken, 1995:24-26, "Linguistic Landscape."
Indigenous languages of the Americas (or Amerindian Languages) are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas.
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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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Subgroups:
  • Valley & Sierra Miwok
  • Coast Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok


Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) can refer to any one of four linguistically-related groups of Native Americans, who lived in what is now
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Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan and as the Muwekma, are the indigenous people of Northern California who have lived in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas since 500 AD, spanning south into the Salinas Valley.
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An endangered language is a language with so few surviving speakers that it is in danger of falling out of use. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language.
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Subgroups:
  • Valley & Sierra Miwok
  • Coast Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok


Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) can refer to any one of four linguistically-related groups of Native Americans, who lived in what is now
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Miwok
  • Coast Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok


The Valley and Sierra Miwok (also called the Plains and Sierra Miwok), were the largest group of Miwok Native American people.
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Miwok
  • Valley & Sierra Miwok
  • Coast Miwok
  • Lake Miwok


The Bay Miwok refers to a cultural and linguistic group of Miwok a Native American people in Northern California who lived in Contra Costa County.
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Miwok
  • Coast Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok


The Valley and Sierra Miwok (also called the Plains and Sierra Miwok), were the largest group of Miwok Native American people.
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Miwok
  • Coast Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok


The Valley and Sierra Miwok (also called the Plains and Sierra Miwok), were the largest group of Miwok Native American people.
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Southern Sierra Miwok is a Utian language spoken by the Native American people called the Southern Sierra Miwok of Northern California.
Sounds
=Consonants
=

The 15 consonants of Southern Sierra Miwok:
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Miwok
  • Valley & Sierra Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok
The Coast Miwok were the second largest group of Miwok Native American people. The Coast Miwok
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An extinct language is a language which no longer has any native speakers, in contrast to a dead language, which is a language which has stopped changing in grammar, vocabulary, and the complete meaning of a sentence.
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For dialects of programming languages, see .


A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.
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Miwok
  • Valley & Sierra Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok
The Coast Miwok were the second largest group of Miwok Native American people. The Coast Miwok
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Miwok
  • Valley & Sierra Miwok
  • Lake Miwok
  • Bay Miwok
The Coast Miwok were the second largest group of Miwok Native American people. The Coast Miwok
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Miwok
  • Valley & Sierra Miwok
  • Coast Miwok
  • Bay Miwok


The Lake Miwok were a branch of the Miwok a Native American people of Northern California. The Lake Miwok lived in the Clear Lake basin of what is now called Lake County.
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Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan and as the Muwekma, are the indigenous people of Northern California who have lived in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas since 500 AD, spanning south into the Salinas Valley.
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Chalon (also known as Soledad) are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone (Coastanoan) people groups of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. The Chalon lived in the Salinas Valley and on the Salinas River.
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Awaswas people (also known as Santa Cruz) are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone (Coastanoan) Native Americans of Northern California. The Awaswas lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains and along the coast of present-day Santa Cruz County from present-day Davenport to Aptos.
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Tamyen (also spelled as Tamien, Thamien) are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone (Coastanoan) people groups of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. The Tamyen lived throughout the Santa Clara Valley.
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Chochenyo (also called Chocheño, Chocenyo) are one of the divisions of the indigenous Ohlone (Coastanoan) people of Northern California. The Chochenyo resided on the east side of the San Francisco Bay (the "East Bay"), primarily in what is now Alameda County, and also Contra Costa
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Ramaytush were one of the major divisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California who inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in the area which is now San Francisco and San Mateo Counties.
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Mutsun is a name of one sub-group of the indigenous Ohlone people of California, as well as the name of the language they spoke.

Mutsun (also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan
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Rumsen (also known as the Rumsien) are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone (Coastanoan) Native American people of Northern California. The Rumsen people resided from the Pajaro River to Point Sur, and the lower courses of the Pajaro, as well as on the Salinas and Carmel
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Karkin (also called Los Carquines in Spanish) is a name of one sub-group of the indigenous Ohlone people of California, as well as the name of the language they spoke.
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For dialects of programming languages, see .


A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.
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See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.


A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in Washington, Oregon, and California. There a number of varying opinions concerning its validity.
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