Siuslaw was the language of the

Siuslaw people Siuslaw is one of the tribes comprising the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and a portion of the off-reservation population forms part of the three Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians located on the southwest Oregon ...

and Lower Umpqua ( Kuitsh) people of Oregon. It is also known as ''Lower Umpqua''. The Siuslaw language had two dialects: Siuslaw proper (Šaayušƛa) and Lower Umpqua (Quuiič).

Classification

Siuslaw is currently considered to be a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...

. It may be part of a Coast Oregon Penutian family together with

Alsea The Alsea are a Native American tribe of Western Oregon. They are (since 1856), confederated with other Tribes on the Siletz Reservation, Oregon, and are members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. Their origin story says that the Yaquina, Al ...

and the

Coosan languages The Coosan (also Coos or Kusan) language family consists of two languages spoken along the southern Oregon coast. Both languages are now extinct. Classification * Hanis ''†'' * Miluk ''†'' ( Lower Coquille) Melville Jacobs (1939) says tha ...

, although the validity of this family is still controversial. Proponents of the disputed

Penutian Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian s ...

phylum usually include Siuslaw as part of it, together with the other Coast Oregon Penutian languages.

Documentation

Published sources are by Leo J. Frachtenberg who collected data from a non-English-speaking native speaker of the Lower Umpqua dialect and her Alsean husband (who spoke it as a second language) during three months of fieldwork in 1911, and by Dell Hymes who worked with four Siuslaw speakers in 1954.Hymes, Dell. (1966)
Some points of Siuslaw phonology.
''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''32'', 328-342. Further archived documentation consists of a 12-page vocabulary by

James Owen Dorsey James Owen Dorsey (October 31, 1848 – February 4, 1895) was an American ethnologist, linguist, and Episcopalian missionary in the Dakota Territory, who contributed to the description of the Ponca, Omaha, and other southern Siouan languages. He ...

, a wordlist of approximately 150 words taken by Melville Jacobs in 1935 in work with Lower Umpqua speaker Hank Johnson, an audio recording of Siuslaw speaker Spencer Scott from 1941, hundreds of pages of notes from John Peabody Harrington in 1942 based on interviews with several native speakers,Harrington, John P. 1942. "Alsea, SIuslaw, Coos, Southwest Oregon Athapaskan: Vocabularies, Linguistic Notes, Ethnographic and Historical Notes." John Peabody Harrington Papers, Alaska/Northwest Coast. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. and audio recordings of vocabulary by

Morris Swadesh Morris Swadesh (; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and ma ...

in 1953.

Phonology

Consonants

Cluster of stops/affricates + glottal stop are realized as

ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. So ...

s ʼ tʼ tɬʼ tsʼ tʃʼ kʼ

Vowels

Vowels are noted as /i æ a u ə o/.

Notes

References

External links

Languages of Oregon – Siuslaw
{{DEFAULTSORT:Siuslaw language Coast Oregon Penutian languages Language isolates of North America Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast Penutian languages Indigenous languages of Oregon Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 1970s 1970s disestablishments in Oregon