Ohlone languages
Encyclopedia
The Ohlone language family also known as "Costanoan", is a family of languages of the San Francisco Bay Area
spoken by the Ohlone
peoples. It is a member of the hypothetical Penutian
language phylum or stock, and (along with the Miwok languages
) the Utian
language family. The most recent work suggests that Costanoan, Miwok, and Yokuts may all be sub-families within a single Yok-Utian language family.
, Chalon
, Chochenyo
(aka Chocheño), Karkin
, Mutsun
, Ramaytush
, Rumsen, and Tamyen. Overall, divergence among these languages seems to have been roughly equivalent to that among the languages of the Romance
sub-family of Indo-European languages. Neighboring groups seem to have been able to understand and speak to each other.
The number and geographic distribution of Ohlone language divisions partially mirrors the distribution of Franciscan missions in their original lands. While the known languages are, in most cases, quite distinct, intermediate dialects may have been lost as local groups gathered at the missions. A newly-discovered text from Mission Santa Clara provides evidence that Chochenyo of the East Bay
area and Tamyen of the Santa Clara Valley
were closely related dialects of a single San Francisco Bay Costanoan language.
The Costanoan languages were all considered extinct by the 1950s. However, today Mutsun, Chochenyo and Rumsen are being "revitalized" (relearned from saved records).
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:
s, or eight separate language
s. Richard Levy, himself a linguist, contradicted himself on this point: First he said "Costanoans themselves were a set of tribelets [small tribes] who spoke a common language... distinguished from one another by slight differences in dialect"; however after saying that, he concluded: "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) stated in 1995 that there were eight dialects, citing missionary-linguist Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta to the effect that the idioms seemed distinct as one traveled from mission to mission, but actually formed a dialect chain from one neighboring local tribe to another. Catherine Callaghan (1997, 2001), a linguist who steeped herself in the primary documents, offered evidence that the Costanoan languages were distinct, with only Ramaytush, Tamyen, and Chochenyo possibly being dialects of a single language. Milliken (2008:6), himself an ethnohistorian and not a linguist, shifted his position in 2008 to follow Callaghan, referring to separate Costanoan languages rather than dialects.
Many of the known tribal and village names were recorded in the California mission records of baptism
, marriage
, and death
. Some names have come from Spanish and Mexican settlers, some from early Anglo-European travelers, and some from the memories of Native American "informants
". Speakers were natives still alive who could remember their group's native language and details.
Some of the former tribe and village names were gleaned from the land maps ("diseños de terreno") submitted by grantees in applying for Spanish and Mexican land grants or designs ("diseños") that were drawn up in Alta California
prior to the Mexican-American War. In this regard, large amounts of untranslated material is available for research in the records of Clinton H. Merriam
housed at the Bancroft Library
, and more material continues to be published by local historical societies and associations.
A partial table of words comes from Indian Names for Plants and Animals Among California and other Western North American Tribes by Clinton Merriam. This published list covers 400 Ohlone-Costanoan words from interviews of native speakers. The Ohlone words listed are by "phonetic English" pronunciations.
External links
Language:
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
spoken by the Ohlone
Ohlone
The Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people of the central California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley...
peoples. It is a member of the hypothetical Penutian
Penutian languages
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. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the...
language phylum or stock, and (along with the Miwok languages
Miwok languages
The Miwok or Miwokan languages, also known as Moquelumnan, are a group of endangered languages spoken in central California in the Sierra Nevada. There are a few dozen speakers of the three Sierra Miwok languages, and as of 1994, two speakers of Lake Miwok...
) the Utian
Utian languages
Utian is a family of indigenous languages spoken in the central and north portion of California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages in the Utian linguistic group...
language family. The most recent work suggests that Costanoan, Miwok, and Yokuts may all be sub-families within a single Yok-Utian language family.
Languages
Costanoan comprises eight attested varieties: AwaswasAwaswas
The Awaswas people are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California...
, Chalon
Chalon
The Chalon are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone people of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. Chalon is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone languages of the Utian family...
, Chochenyo
Chochenyo
The Chochenyo are one of the divisions of the indigenous Ohlone people of Northern California...
(aka Chocheño), Karkin
Karkin language
Karkin 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
Mutsun language
Mutsun is both: a name of one sub-group of the Ohlone indigenous people of Alta California; and the name of the native language the Mutsun tribes spoke.-The people:...
, Ramaytush
Ramaytush
The Ramaytush are one of the linguistic subdivisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California. Historically, the Ramaytush 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.The Ramaytush...
, Rumsen, and Tamyen. Overall, divergence among these languages seems to have been roughly equivalent to that among the languages of the Romance
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
sub-family of Indo-European languages. Neighboring groups seem to have been able to understand and speak to each other.
The number and geographic distribution of Ohlone language divisions partially mirrors the distribution of Franciscan missions in their original lands. While the known languages are, in most cases, quite distinct, intermediate dialects may have been lost as local groups gathered at the missions. A newly-discovered text from Mission Santa Clara provides evidence that Chochenyo of the East Bay
East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)
The East Bay is a commonly used, informal term for the lands on the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, United States...
area and Tamyen of the Santa Clara Valley
Santa Clara Valley
The Santa Clara Valley is a valley just south of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California in the United States. Much of Santa Clara County and its county seat, San José, are in the Santa Clara Valley. The valley was originally known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight for its high concentration...
were closely related dialects of a single San Francisco Bay Costanoan language.
The Costanoan languages were all considered extinct by the 1950s. However, today Mutsun, Chochenyo and Rumsen are being "revitalized" (relearned from saved records).
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:
- Karkin ( Carquin)
- Northern Costanoan
- San Francisco Bay Costanoan
- TamyenTamyenThe Tamyen are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone people groups of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. The Tamyen lived throughout the Santa Clara Valley...
( Tamien, Santa Clara Costanoan) - ChochenyoChochenyoThe Chochenyo are one of the divisions of the indigenous Ohlone people of Northern California...
( Chocheño, Chocheno, East Bay Costanoan) - RamaytushRamaytushThe Ramaytush are one of the linguistic subdivisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California. Historically, the Ramaytush 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.The Ramaytush...
( San Francisco Costanoan)
- Tamyen
- AwaswasAwaswasThe Awaswas people are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California...
( Santa Cruz Costanoan) - There may have been more than one Costanoan language spoken within the proposed Awaswas area, as the small amount of linguistic material attributed to Mission Santa Cruz Costanoans is highly variable. - ChalonChalonThe Chalon are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone people of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. Chalon is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone languages of the Utian family...
( Cholon, Soledad) - Chalon may be a transitional language between Northern and Southern Costanoan.
- San Francisco Bay Costanoan
- Southern Costanoan
- Mutsun ( San Juan Bautista Costanoan)
- RumsenRumsenRumsen is one of eight language divisions of the Ohlone Native American people of Northern California...
( Rumsien, San Carlos, Carmel)
Dialect or language debate
Regarding the eight Costanoan branches, sources differ on if they were eight language dialectDialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s, or eight separate language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s. Richard Levy, himself a linguist, contradicted himself on this point: First he said "Costanoans themselves were a set of tribelets [small tribes] who spoke a common language... distinguished from one another by slight differences in dialect"; however after saying that, he concluded: "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) stated in 1995 that there were eight dialects, citing missionary-linguist Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta to the effect that the idioms seemed distinct as one traveled from mission to mission, but actually formed a dialect chain from one neighboring local tribe to another. Catherine Callaghan (1997, 2001), a linguist who steeped herself in the primary documents, offered evidence that the Costanoan languages were distinct, with only Ramaytush, Tamyen, and Chochenyo possibly being dialects of a single language. Milliken (2008:6), himself an ethnohistorian and not a linguist, shifted his position in 2008 to follow Callaghan, referring to separate Costanoan languages rather than dialects.
Native placenames
The native people belonged to one or more tribes, bands or villages, and/or to one of the eight linguistic group regions (as assigned by ethnolinguists). Native names listed in the mission records were, in some cases, clearly principal village names, in others the name assigned to the region of a "multifamily landholding group" (per Milliken). Although many native names have been written in historical records, the exact spelling and pronunciations were not entirely standardized in modern English. Ethnohistorians have resorted to approximating their indigenous regional boundaries as well. (The word that Kroeber coined to designate California tribes, bands and villages, tribelet, has been published in many records but is advisably offensive and incorrect, per the Ohlone people.)Many of the known tribal and village names were recorded in the California mission records of baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
, marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, and death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
. Some names have come from Spanish and Mexican settlers, some from early Anglo-European travelers, and some from the memories of Native American "informants
Informant (linguistics)
An informant or consultant in linguistics is a native speaker who acts as a linguistic reference for a language being studied. The informant's role is that of a senior interpreter, who demonstrates native pronunciation, provides grammaticality judgments regarding linguistic well-formedness, and may...
". Speakers were natives still alive who could remember their group's native language and details.
Some of the former tribe and village names were gleaned from the land maps ("diseños de terreno") submitted by grantees in applying for Spanish and Mexican land grants or designs ("diseños") that were drawn up in Alta California
Alta California
Alta California was a province and territory in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and later a territory and department in independent Mexico. The territory was created in 1769 out of the northern part of the former province of Las Californias, and consisted of the modern American states of California,...
prior to the Mexican-American War. In this regard, large amounts of untranslated material is available for research in the records of Clinton H. Merriam
Clinton Hart Merriam
Clinton Hart Merriam was an American zoologist, ornithologist, entomologist and ethnographer.Known as "Hart" to his friends, Dr. Clinton Hart Merriam was born in New York City in 1855. His father, Clinton Levi Merriam, was a U.S. congressman. He studied biology and anatomy at Yale University and...
housed at the Bancroft Library
Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired as a gift/purchase from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity...
, and more material continues to be published by local historical societies and associations.
Spelling and pronunciation
Many of the original sounds were first heard and copied down by Spanish missionaries using Spanish as a reference language, subject to human error, later translated into English and Anglicized over time. Spelling errors crept in as different missionaries kept separate records over a long period of time, under various administrators. Ethnohistorians Kroeber, Merriam, and others interviewed Ohlone speakers and were able to define some pronunciations on word lists. Ethnolinguists have used this to some advantage to create phonetic tables giving some semblance of languages, notably the Selected Costanoan Words by Merriam.Native words
| Selected Costanoan Words by Merriam | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| English Word | Schedule #56 | Schedule #57 | Word # |
| Salmon Oncorhynchus Oncorhynchus is a genus of fish in the family Salmonidae; it contains the Pacific salmons and Pacific trouts. The name of the genus is derived from the Greek onkos and rynchos , in reference to the hooked jaws of males in the mating season .-Range:Salmon and trout with ranges generally in waters... |
Oo'-rahk | Hoo"-rah-ka | 247 |
| Abalone Abalone Abalone , from aulón, are small to very large-sized edible sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Haliotidae and the genus Haliotis... |
Ooch | Hah-shan | 254 |
| Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) | - | Ho-o-pe | 280 |
| Valley Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia or Quercus lobata Valley Oak Quercus lobata, commonly called the Valley oak, grows into the largest of North American oaks. It is endemic to California, growing in the interior valleys and foothills. Mature specimens may attain an age of up to 600 years. This deciduous oak requires year-round access to groundwater.Its thick,... ) |
Yū'Ks | You-kish | 296 |
| Big Round Tule Scirpus The plant genus Scirpus consists of a large number of aquatic, grass-like species in the family Cyperaceae , many with the common names club-rush or bulrush . Other common names are deergrass or grassweed.The genus has a cosmopolitan distribution, and grows in wetlands and moist soil... |
Rōks | Ró-kus | 409 |
A partial table of words comes from Indian Names for Plants and Animals Among California and other Western North American Tribes by Clinton Merriam. This published list covers 400 Ohlone-Costanoan words from interviews of native speakers. The Ohlone words listed are by "phonetic English" pronunciations.
External links
Language:
- Chochenyo revitalization - language at UCB "News" 2004
- Chochenyo revitalization - language at UCB "Faith in Words" 2004
- Mutsun revitalization - language
- Grammar of Mutsun by Arroyo de la Cuesta, Felipe (1842) (in Spanish)
- Tamyen 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...
- Rumsen 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...
- Ramaytush 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...
- Chalon 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...