Makah language

Makah
qʷi·qʷi·diččaq
Spoken in	United States
Region	Northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca
Extinct	2002. Last native speaker was Ruth E. Claplanhoo[1]
Language family	Wakashan Southern Wakashan Makah
Language codes
ISO 639-3	myh
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

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.^[2][3] The endonymous name for Makah is qʷi·qʷi·diččaq.^[4]

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.

Structure

Phonology

The phonemes (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.^[5]

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar		Postalveolar	Velar		Uvular		Glottal
			central	lateral		plain	labial	plain	labial
Stops	voiceless	p	t			k	kʷ	q	qʷ	ʔ
	ejective	p̓ [pʼ]	t̓ [tʼ]			k̓ [kʼ]	k̓ʷ [kʷʼ]	q̓ [qʼ]	q̓ʷ [qʷʼ]
	voiced	b	d
Affricates	voiceless		c [ts]	ƛ [tɬ]	č [tʃ]
	ejective		c̓ [tsʼ]	ƛ̓ [tɬʼ]	č̓ [tʃʼ]
Fricatives			s	ł [ɬ]	š [ʃ]	x	xʷ	x̌ [χ]	x̌ʷ [χʷ]
Approximants				l		y [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 "diphthongs" (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 evidentiality, indicating the level and source of the speaker's knowledge about a statement. Some examples are shown in the following table:^[6]

Example	Translation	Evidential
hi·dawʔaƛwa·d	"I hear he found it"	-wa·t, hearsay
pu·pu·q̓adʔi	"he's blowing a whistle"	-q̓adi, auditory
č̓apaccaqil	"It looks like a canoe"	-caqił, uncertain visual evidence, as trying to make out something at a distance
haʔuk̓aƛpi·dic	"I see you ate"	-pi·t, inference from physical evidence
dudu·k̓aƛx̌a·š	"He's probably singing"	-x̌a·-š, 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".

References

1. ^ LOWLANDS-L archives - August 2002, week 4 (#10)
2. ^ Makah Language and the Makah Indian Tribe (Kweedishchaaht, Kweneecheeaht, Macaw, Classet, Klasset)
3. ^ Our Language
4. ^ Davidson, Matthew (2002). Studies in Southern Wakashan (Nootkan) Grammar. Ph.D. dissertation, SUNY Buffalo, p. 349
5. ^ The phoneme inventory and Makah alphabet are from pg. 422 of Renker and Gunther (1990) and from Makah Alphabet
6. ^ Jacobsen (1986). "The Heterogeneity of Evidentials in Makah." In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, eds. Wallace Chafe & Johanna Nichols. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Cited in Mithun, Marianne (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pg. 185

Bibliography

• Renker, Ann M. and Gunther, Erna (1990). "Makah". In "Northwest Coast", ed. Wayne Suttles. Vol. 7 of Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

External links

• Ethnologue entry
• The Wakashan Linguistics Page