Ipay, also known as 'Iipay or Northern Diegueño, is the Native American language spoken by the
Kumeyaay people of central
San Diego County
San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the f ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
.
Hinton (1994:28) suggested a conservative estimate of 25 surviving Ipai speakers.
Ipai belongs to the
Yuman language family and to the Delta–California branch of that family. Ipai and its neighbors to the south,
Kumeyaay and
Tipai
The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...
, were often considered to be dialects of a single Diegueño language, but the current consensus among linguists seem to be that at least three distinct languages are present within the dialect chain (e.g., Langdon 1990). Confusingly, Kumeyaay is commonly used as a designation both for the central language in this family and for the Ipai-Kumeyaay-Tipai people as a whole.
Published documentation for the Ipai language includes reference and teaching grammars, a dictionary, and several texts (cf.
Mithun 1999:578).
Notes
References
* Couro, Ted and Christina Hutcheson. 1973. ''Dictionary of Mesa Grande Diegueño;: 'Iipay Aa-English/English-'Iipay Aa'', Malki Museum Press, California.
* Couro, Ted & Langdon, Margaret. 1975. ''Let's talk 'Iipay Aa: An introduction to the Mesa Grande Diegueño language'', Malki Museum Press, California.
* Hinton, Leanne. 1994. ''Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages''. Heyday Books, Berkeley, California.
* Langdon, Margaret. 1970. ''A Grammar of Diegueño: The Mesa Grande Dialect.'' University of California Press, Berkeley, California.
* Langdon, Margaret. 1990. "Diegueño: how many languages?" In ''Proceedings of the 1990 Hokan–Penutian Languages Workshop'', edited by James E. Redden, pp. 184–190. University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale.
* Mithun, Marianne. 1999. ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge University Press.
External links
Mesa Grande Ipai basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database'Iipay Aa lessons and vocabulary
{{Hokan languages
Kumeyaay
Indigenous languages of California
Yuman–Cochimí languages
Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas