Makah language
Encyclopedia
The Makah language is the Indigenous
language spoken by the Makah people. Makah has been extinct as a first language
since 2002, when its last fluent native speaker died. However, it survives as a second language, and the Makah tribe is attempting to revive the language, including through preschool classes. The endonymous name for Makah is qʷi·qʷi·diččaq.
Makah is spoken by the Makah people who reside in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula
of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca
. It is closely related to Nuu-chah-nulth
and Ditidaht, which are languages of the First Nations
of the west coast of Vancouver Island
on the north side of the strait, in the Canadian province
of British Columbia
. Makah is the only member of the Wakashan language family
in the United States, with the other members spoken by in British Columbia
, from Vancouver Island
to the Central Coast
region.
Makah, Nuu-chah-nulth and Ditidaht belong to the Southern Nootkan branch of the Wakashan
family. The Northern Wakashan languages, which are Kwak'wala, Heiltsuk-Oowekyala and Haisla
, are spoken farther north, beyond the territory of the Nuu-chah-nulth people.
s (distinctive sounds) of Makah are presented below in the Makah alphabet; if the symbol in the native alphabet differs from the IPA
symbol, the IPA equivalent will be given in brackets.
Consonants
Vowels
There are five "short" vowels (actually lax), written a, e, i, o, and u, and pronounced [ə], [ɛ], [ɪ], [ɔ], and [ʊ]), five "long" vowels (written a·, e·, i·, o·, and u·, and pronounced [a], [æ], [i], [o], and [u]), and six "diphthong
s" (written ay, oy, ey, iy, aw, and uy, and pronounced [aj], [ɔj], [e], [iː], [aw], and [uːj]).
, indicating the level and source of the speaker's knowledge about a statement. Some examples are shown in the following table:
Alongside those examples, compare corresponding sentences without the evidentials: hi·dawʔal, "he found it"; č̓apac̓, "it's a canoe"; haʔuk̓alic, "you're eating"; dudu·k̓al, "he's singing".
Indigenous languages of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
language spoken by the Makah people. Makah has been extinct as a first language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
since 2002, when its last fluent native speaker died. However, it survives as a second language, and the Makah tribe is attempting to revive the language, including through preschool classes. The endonymous name for Makah is qʷi·qʷi·diččaq.
Makah is spoken by the Makah people who reside in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula
Olympic Peninsula
The Olympic Peninsula is the large arm of land in western Washington state of the USA, that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the east by Puget Sound. Cape Alava, the westernmost point in the contiguous...
of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca
Strait of Juan de Fuca
The Strait of Juan de Fuca is a large body of water about long that is the Salish Sea outlet to the Pacific Ocean...
. It is closely related to Nuu-chah-nulth
Nuu-chah-nulth language
Nuu-chah-nulth is a Wakashan language spoken in the Pacific Northwest of North America, on the west coast of Vancouver Island from Barkley Sound to Quatsino Sound in British Columbia, by the Nuu-chah-nulth people...
and Ditidaht, which are languages of the First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
of the west coast of Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several North American locations named after George Vancouver, the British Royal Navy officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America between 1791 and 1794...
on the north side of the strait, in the Canadian province
Provinces and territories of Canada
The provinces and territories of Canada combine to make up the world's second-largest country by area. There are ten provinces and three territories...
of British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
. Makah is the only member of the Wakashan language family
Wakashan languages
Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca....
in the United States, with the other members spoken by in British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, from Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several North American locations named after George Vancouver, the British Royal Navy officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America between 1791 and 1794...
to the Central Coast
British Columbia Coast
The British Columbia Coast or BC Coast is Canada's western continental coastline on the Pacific Ocean. The usage is synonymous with the term West Coast of Canada....
region.
Makah, Nuu-chah-nulth and Ditidaht belong to the Southern Nootkan branch of the Wakashan
Wakashan languages
Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca....
family. The Northern Wakashan languages, which are Kwak'wala, Heiltsuk-Oowekyala and Haisla
Haisla language
The Haisla language is a First Nations language spoken by the Haisla people of the North Coast region of the Canadian province of British Columbia, who are based in the village of Kitaamat 10 km from the town of Kitimat at the head of the Douglas Channel, a 120 km fjord that serves as a...
, are spoken farther north, beyond the territory of the Nuu-chah-nulth people.
Phonology
The phonemePhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s (distinctive sounds) of Makah are presented below in the Makah alphabet; if the symbol in the native alphabet differs from 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...
symbol, the IPA equivalent will be given in brackets.
Consonants
| 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... |
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... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as 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... |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central Central consonant A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. The class contrasts with lateral consonants, in which air flows over the sides of the tongue rather than down its center.... |
lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
plain | labial Labialisation Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded.The most common... |
plain | labial | |||||
| Stops 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 Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
p | t | k | kʷ | q | qʷ | ʔ | ||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
[pʼ] | [tʼ] | [kʼ] | [kʷʼ] | [qʼ] | [qʷʼ] | ||||
| voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate... |
b | d | ||||||||
| Affricates Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
[ts] | [tɬ] | [tʃ] | ||||||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
[tsʼ] | [tɬʼ] | [tʃʼ] | |||||||
| Fricatives Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
s | [ɬ] | [ʃ] | x | xʷ | [χ] | [χʷ] | |||
| Approximants Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
l | [j] | w | |||||||
Vowels
There are five "short" vowels (actually lax), written a, e, i, o, and u, and pronounced [ə], [ɛ], [ɪ], [ɔ], and [ʊ]), five "long" vowels (written a·, e·, i·, o·, and u·, and pronounced [a], [æ], [i], [o], and [u]), and six "diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s" (written ay, oy, ey, iy, aw, and uy, and pronounced [aj], [ɔj], [e], [iː], [aw], and [uːj]).
Morphology
Like other Wakashan languages, Makah inflects verbs for evidentialityEvidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality...
, indicating the level and source of the speaker's knowledge about a statement. Some examples are shown in the following table:
| Example | Translation | Evidential |
|---|---|---|
| "I hear he found it" | , hearsay | |
| "he's blowing a whistle" | , auditory | |
| "It looks like a canoe" | , uncertain visual evidence, as trying to make out something at a distance | |
| "I see you ate" | , inference from physical evidence | |
| "He's probably singing" | , inferred probability |
Alongside those examples, compare corresponding sentences without the evidentials: hi·dawʔal, "he found it"; č̓apac̓, "it's a canoe"; haʔuk̓alic, "you're eating"; dudu·k̓al, "he's singing".