Luiseño language
Encyclopedia
The Luiseño language is an Uto-Aztecan
language of California
spoken by the Luiseño
, a Native American
people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County
, California
, to the northern part of San Diego County
, California
, and inland 30 miles. The people
are called "Luiseño" due to their proximity to the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia
.
The language is highly endangered
, but there is an active language revitalization project assisted by linguists from the University of California, Riverside
. A related language spoken by the Juaneño
people is extinct
.
s strung together.
phoneme
s.
s [ə] and [ɨ] are free variants
of [e] and [i] respectively. However, other speakers do not use these variants. Sparkman records fewer than 25 Luiseño words with either [ə] or [ɨ]. For one of these words (ixíla “a cough”) the pronunciations [əxɨla] and [ɨxɨla] are both recorded.
Unstressed
[u] freely varies with [o]. Likewise, unstressed [i] and [e] are free variants.
es, notably the possessive prefixes no- “my”, cham- “our”, etc. Hence polóv “good”, but o-plovi “your goodness”; kichum “houses” (nominative case
), but kichmi “houses” (accusative case
).
quantitatively. Luiseño vowels have three lengths.
Overlong vowels are rare in Luiseño, typically reserved for absolutes, such as interjection
s, e.g. aaashisha, roughly “haha!” (more accurately an exclamation of praise, joy or laughter).
regularly falls on the first syllable
of a word. In Luiseño, stress is fixed and is not contrastive.
Many orthographies
mark irregular stress with an acute accent
on the stressed syllable’s vowel, e.g. chilúy “speak Spanish”. In these systems, irregularly stressed long vowels either carry a written accent on both vowels or the first vowel only, e.g. koyóówut or koyóowut “whale”. Also, stress is not visually represented when it falls on the first syllable, e.g. hiicha “what”.
Another convention is to mark stress by underlining accented vowels, e.g. koyoowut “whale”.
As a rule, the possessive prefixes are unstressed. The accent remains on the first syllable of the root word, e.g. nokaamay “my son” and never *nokaamay. One rare exception is the word pó-ha “alone” (< po- “his/her/its” + ha “self”), whose invariable prefix and fixed accent suggests that it is now considered a single lexical item
(compare noha “myself”, poha “him/herself”, etc.).
inventory.
and /ɡ/ are found only in borrowed words, principally from Spanish and English.
, Luiseño has a written tradition that stretches back to the Spanish settlement
of San Diego. Pablo Tac (1822–1841), a native Luiseño speaker and a convert to Roman Catholicism, was the first to develop an orthography for his native language. His orthography leaned heavily on Spanish
, which he learned in his youth.
Although Luiseño has no standard orthography, a commonly accepted spelling is implemented in reservation classrooms and college campuses in San Diego where the language is taught. The various orthographies that have been used for writing the language show influences from Spanish, English and the IPA
.
made a series of recordings speakers of Luiseño in the 1930s. Those recordings, made on aluminum disks, were deposited in the United States National Archives. Those recordings have since been digitized and made available over the internet by the Smithsonian Institution
.
----
Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
language of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
spoken by the Luiseño
Luiseño
The Luiseño, or Payomkowishum, are a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County to the northern part of San Diego County, and...
, a Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, California
Los Angeles County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 9,818,605, making it the most populous county in the United States. Los Angeles County alone is more populous than 42 individual U.S. states...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, to the northern part of San Diego County
San Diego County, California
San Diego County is a large county located in the southwestern corner of the US state of California. Hence, San Diego County is also located in the southwestern corner of the 48 contiguous United States. Its county seat and largest city is San Diego. Its population was about 2,813,835 in the 2000...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, and inland 30 miles. The people
Luiseño
The Luiseño, or Payomkowishum, are a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County to the northern part of San Diego County, and...
are called "Luiseño" due to their proximity to the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia
Mission San Luis Rey de Francia
Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, also known as Mission San Luis Rey or San Luis Rey Mission Church, was founded on June 13, 1798 in coastal Las Californias, in the present day U.S. city of Oceanside in California. The local Quechnajuichom Native American tribe became known as the Luiseño 'Mission...
.
The language is highly endangered
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
, but there is an active language revitalization project assisted by linguists from the University of California, Riverside
University of California, Riverside
The University of California, Riverside, commonly known as UCR or UC Riverside, is a public research university and one of the ten general campuses of the University of California system. UCR is consistently ranked as one of the most ethnically and economically diverse universities in the United...
. A related language spoken by the Juaneño
Juaneño
The Juaneño or Acagchemem are a Native American group from Southern California. The Juaneño lived in what is now part of Orange and San Diego Counties and received their Spanish name from the priests of the California mission chain due to their proximity to Mission San Juan Capistrano...
people is extinct
Extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
.
Morphology
Luiseño is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemeMorpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s strung together.
Vowels
Luiseño has five vowelVowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s.
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i | u | |
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
e | o | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a |
Variants
For some native speakers recorded in The Sparkman Grammar of Luiseño, the allophoneAllophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s [ə] and [ɨ] are free variants
Free variation
Free variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers...
of [e] and [i] respectively. However, other speakers do not use these variants. Sparkman records fewer than 25 Luiseño words with either [ə] or [ɨ]. For one of these words (ixíla “a cough”) the pronunciations [əxɨla] and [ɨxɨla] are both recorded.
Unstressed
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
[u] freely varies with [o]. Likewise, unstressed [i] and [e] are free variants.
Vowel syncope
Vowels are often syncopated when attaching certain affixAffix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es, notably the possessive prefixes no- “my”, cham- “our”, etc. Hence polóv “good”, but o-plovi “your goodness”; kichum “houses” (nominative case
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
), but kichmi “houses” (accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
).
Vowel length
Luiseño distinguishes vowel lengthVowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
quantitatively. Luiseño vowels have three lengths.
- ShortVowel lengthIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
: The basic vowel length. In writing, this is the standard value of a given vowel, e.g. . - LongVowel lengthIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
: The vowel is held twice as long but with no change in quality. In writing, a long vowel is often indicated by doubling it, e.g.. - OverlongVowel lengthIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
: The vowel is held three times as long but with no change in quality. In writing, an overlong vowel is indicated by tripling it, e.g..
Overlong vowels are rare in Luiseño, typically reserved for absolutes, such as interjection
Interjection
In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
s, e.g. aaashisha, roughly “haha!” (more accurately an exclamation of praise, joy or laughter).
Accent
A stress accentStress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
regularly falls on the first syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
of a word. In Luiseño, stress is fixed and is not contrastive.
Many orthographies
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
mark irregular stress with an acute accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
on the stressed syllable’s vowel, e.g. chilúy “speak Spanish”. In these systems, irregularly stressed long vowels either carry a written accent on both vowels or the first vowel only, e.g. koyóówut or koyóowut “whale”. Also, stress is not visually represented when it falls on the first syllable, e.g. hiicha “what”.
Another convention is to mark stress by underlining accented vowels, e.g. koyoowut “whale”.
As a rule, the possessive prefixes are unstressed. The accent remains on the first syllable of the root word, e.g. nokaamay “my son” and never *nokaamay. One rare exception is the word pó-ha “alone” (< po- “his/her/its” + ha “self”), whose invariable prefix and fixed accent suggests that it is now considered a single lexical item
Lexis (linguistics)
In linguistics, a lexis is the total word-stock or lexicon having items of lexical, rather than grammatical, meaning. This notion contrasts starkly with the Chomskian proposition of a “Universal Grammar” as the prime mover for language...
(compare noha “myself”, poha “him/herself”, etc.).
Consonants
Luiseño has a fairly rich consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
inventory.
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ŋ | |||||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
voiceless | p | t | tʃ | k | q | ʔ | |
| voiced | b | d | (ɡ) | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | (f) | s̪ | s̺ | ʃ | x | h | |
| voiced | v | ð | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||||
| Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular.... |
r | |||||||
and /ɡ/ are found only in borrowed words, principally from Spanish and English.
- Both [ʃ] and [tʃ] are found in word initial position. However, only [ʃ] occurs intervocalically, and only [ʃ] is found preconsonantally and at word final position. Examples of these allophones in complementary distributionComplementary distributionComplementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment...
abound, such as ya’ásh ('man nom.Nominative caseThe nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
') and ya’áchi ('man acc.Accusative caseThe accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
').
Spelling systems
Along with an extensive oral traditionOral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
, Luiseño has a written tradition that stretches back to the Spanish settlement
Conquistador
Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
of San Diego. Pablo Tac (1822–1841), a native Luiseño speaker and a convert to Roman Catholicism, was the first to develop an orthography for his native language. His orthography leaned heavily on Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, which he learned in his youth.
Although Luiseño has no standard orthography, a commonly accepted spelling is implemented in reservation classrooms and college campuses in San Diego where the language is taught. The various orthographies that have been used for writing the language show influences from Spanish, English and the IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
.
| IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... |
Pablo Tac (1830s) | Sparkman (1900) | Modern |
|---|---|---|---|
| (Long vowel, e.g. /iː/) | ii | i· | ii |
| /tʃ/ | c´ | ch | |
| /ʃ/ | s´ | sh | |
| /q/ | q´ | q | q |
| /ʔ/ | ' | ' | |
| /x/ | j | x | x |
| /ð/ | th / ð | ||
| /ŋ/ | n´ | ng / ñ | |
| /j/ | y | y | y |
Sample Texts
The Lord's Prayer (or the Our Father) in Luiseño, as recorded in The Sparkman Grammar of Luiseño:- Cham-na’ tuupaña aaukat cham-cha oi ohó’vanma.
- Toshño om chaami.
- Loví’i om hish mimchapun ivá’ ooxñ tuupaña axáninuk.
- Ovi om chaamik cham-naachaxoni choun teméti.
- Maaxaxan-up om chaamik hish aláxwichi chaam-lo’xai ivianáninuk chaam-cha maaxaxma pomóomi chaami hish pom-lo’xai aláxwichi.
- Tuusho kamíí’i chaami chaam-lo’xai hish hichakati.
- Kwavcho om chaami.
- Our-father / sky-in / being / we / you / believe / always.
- Command / you / us.
- Do / you / anything / whatever / here / earth-on / sky-in / as.
- Give / you / us-to / our-food / every / day.
- Pardon / you / us-to / anything / bad / our-doing / this as /we / pardon / them / us / anything / their-doing / bad.
- Not / allow / us / our-doing / anything / wicked.
- Care / you / us.
Linguistic documentation
Linguist John Peabody HarringtonJohn Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the native peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which has remained unpublished: the shelf space in the Library of Congress dedicated to his work...
made a series of recordings speakers of Luiseño in the 1930s. Those recordings, made on aluminum disks, were deposited in the United States National Archives. Those recordings have since been digitized and made available over the internet by the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
.
External links
- Ethnologue entry for Luiseño
- Luiseño language revitalization project
- Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians
- Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians
- Luiseño language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian LanguagesSurvey of California and Other Indian LanguagesThe Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas...
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