Chochenyo (also called ''Chocheño'', ''Northern Ohlone'' and ''East Bay Costanoan'') is the spoken language of the

Chochenyo people The Chochenyo (also called Chocheño, Chocenyo) are one of the divisions of the indigenous Ohlone (Costanoan) people of Northern California. The Chochenyo reside on the east side of the San Francisco Bay (the East Bay), primarily in what is n ...

. Chochenyo is one of the

Ohlone languages The Ohlone languages, also known as Costanoan, are a small family of indigenous languages spoken by the Ohlone people. The pre-contact distribution of these languages ranged from the southern San Francisco Bay Area to northern Monterey County. ...

in the Utian family. Linguistically, Chochenyo, Tamyen and

Ramaytush The Ramaytush or Rammay-tuš people are a linguistic subdivision of the Ohlone people of Northern California. The term Ramaytush was first applied to them in the 1970s, but the modern Ohlone people of the peninsula have claimed it as their ethn ...

are thought to have been dialects of a single language, but Tamyen and Ramaytush are very poorly attested. The speech of the last two native speakers of Chochenyo was documented in the 1920s in the unpublished fieldnotes of the

Bureau of American Ethnology The Bureau of American Ethnology (or BAE, originally, Bureau of Ethnology) was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior D ...

linguist

John Peabody Harrington John Peabody Harrington (April 29, 1884 – October 21, 1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which ...

. The final native speaker of the language was José Guzmán who died in 1934 in Niles, California. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, which (as of 2007) is petitioning for U.S. federal recognition, has made efforts to revive the language. As of 2004, "the Chochenyo database being developed by the tribe ... ontainedfrom 1,000 to 2,000 basic words." By 2009, many students were able to carry on conversations in the Chochenyo language. Through both successful word formation, as well as extending documented words, the Chochenyo dictionary has grown significantly throughout the early 21st Century. During the

canonization Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of ...

of Saint Junípero Serra on September 23, 2015, the first reading at Mass was read in Chochenyo by Vincent Medina, a Muwekma Ohlone tribal member.

Phonology

Consonants The vowels can be long or short. Prolongation is shown by repeating the vowel. *oo is pronounced /oː/, not /uː/

References

External links

Chocheyno, California Language Archive

Chochenyo language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Chochenyo revitalization – language at UCB "Faith in Words" 2004
rchived version
Muwekma Ohlone Tribe website

The Little Tribe That Could
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chochenyo Language Ohlone languages Extinct languages of North America Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area History of the San Francisco Bay Area