The Achumawi language (also Achomawi or Pit River language) is the
indigenous language
An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples. This language is from a linguistically distinct community that originated in the area. Indigenous languages are not neces ...
spoken by the
Pit River people in the northeast corner of present-day
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 ...
. The term Achumawi is an anglicization of the name of the Fall River band, ''ajúmmááwí'', from ''ajúmmá'' "river". nine bands, with
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...
differences primarily between upriver (Atwamwi, Astariwawi; Kosalektawi, Hammawi, Hewisedawi dialects) and downriver (Madesiwi, Itsatawi, Ilmawi, and Achumawi (proper) dialects), demarcated by the
Big Valley mountains east of the Fall River valley.
Genetic relationships
Together, Achumawi and
Atsugewi
The Atsugewi are Native Americans residing in northeastern California, United States. Their traditional lands are near Mount Shasta, specifically the Pit River drainage on Burney, Hat, and Dixie Valley or Horse Creeks. They are closely related t ...
are said to comprise the
Palaihnihan
Palaihnihan (also Palaihnih) is a language family of northeastern California. It consists of two closely related languages, both now extinct:
# Atsugewi ''(†)''
# Achumawi
Achomawi (also Achumawi, Ajumawi and Ahjumawi), are the northerly ...
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in his ...
separate from the adjacent and related
Shastan family. The basis of this grouping is weakened by poor quality of data. David Olmsted's data dictionary depends almost entirely upon de Angulo, and carelessly includes
Pomo
The Pomo are an Indigenous people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small gr ...
vocabulary from a manuscript in which he (de Angulo) set out to demonstrate that Achumawi and Pomo are not related.
William Bright
William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics.
Biography
Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...
and Shirley Silver questioned Olmsted's results and methods of reconstruction. Kroeber (1925:279) acknowledged that
The phenomenon of non-reciprocal intelligibility is a matter of bilingualism in the smaller and more dependent of two exogamous communities; Kroeber (1925:308) estimated that the Achumawi were ten times more numerous than the Atsugewi.
Phonology
Achumawi has 29 consonants. The stops and affricate (aside from the marginally contrastive
glottal stop) are in three series, plain, aspirated, and
laryngealized
In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. It is a special kind of phonation in which ...
or
glottalized
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...
. The
aspirated series is contrastive only syllable-initially and probably derives historically from the voiceless-released first member of a consonant cluster, as in the neighboring and possibly related
Yana language
The Yana language (also Yanan) was formerly spoken by the Yana people, who lived in north-central California between the Feather and Pit rivers in what is now the Shasta and Tehama counties. The last speaker of the southernmost dialect, which ...
. This is seen morphophonemically in e.g. ''it'' "I, me", ''itʰˑú'' "my, mine".
The plain-aspirated distinction is neutralized and realized with voiceless release in syllable-final position and before another consonant; the aspirates are much more fortis than this voiceless release. Syllable-initial plain stops are voiceless (without voiceless release) after long vowel or when geminate (long), and voiced elsewhere. The laryngealized stops are similar in articulation to the
ejective
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 ...
glottalized
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...
stops of neighboring languages, but more
lenis, that is, not "popped" unless an unusual effort is made at articulating the distinction.
The language has a 5-vowel system /i e a o u/. Two degrees of length are contrastive for both vowels and consonants. Long vowels are typically more peripheral and short vowels more centralized, phonetically
� ɛ ʌ ə ʊ The mid vowels /e o/ are probably of secondary origin historically, as in
Yana and
Atsugewi
The Atsugewi are Native Americans residing in northeastern California, United States. Their traditional lands are near Mount Shasta, specifically the Pit River drainage on Burney, Hat, and Dixie Valley or Horse Creeks. They are closely related t ...
. A short centralized vowel
� ɨappears epenthetically between the consonants of certain prefixes, as in ''lhúpta'' "let's go!". Vowel length assimilates the next successive laryngeal state, that is, the second
mora of a long vowel is devoiced before a plain or aspirated consonant (
preaspiration In phonetics, preaspiration (sometimes spelled pre-aspiration) is a period of voicelessness or aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstru ...
) and word finally before silence, and is
laryngealized
In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. It is a special kind of phonation in which ...
before a laryngealized consonant. In upriver dialects vowels and plain stops are more fully voiced. In downriver dialects, utterance-final syllables may be devoiced or whispered, especially under interrogative intonation.
A light syllable consists of a consonant and vowel (CV), and a heavy syllable either contains a long vowel (CVˑ) or is closed with a second consonant (CVC).
Unlike the neighboring and related language
Atsugewi
The Atsugewi are Native Americans residing in northeastern California, United States. Their traditional lands are near Mount Shasta, specifically the Pit River drainage on Burney, Hat, and Dixie Valley or Horse Creeks. They are closely related t ...
, Achumawi has contrastive high and low tones.
Morphology
The Achumawi language does not have gender but it has two forms of the copula ("to be") distinguishing animate and inanimate. The verb stem comprises one or more verb roots plus optional adverbial affixes. Inflectional affixes on verbs distinguish singular, dual, and plural number, and suffixes may optionally express severality and plurality of nouns. Many nouns and adjectives are derived from verb stems or participles, and some verb stems are formed by noun incorporation. The language has independent adjectives and numerals.
Current status

Today, the Achumawi language is critically endangered.
[
] Out of an estimated 1500 Achumawi people remaining in northeastern California, perhaps ten spoke the language in 1991, with only eight in 2000.
As of 2013, a
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on ...
was planned for the language.
Louise Davis, who lives in northern California, is almost tearful when she describes hearing people using the language of her Pit River tribe in conversation for the first time. It happened years ago when an older man from another part of the state met up with her grandmother.
It was such a powerful, emotional experience that Davis is driven to use flashcards at home with her children and do whatever it takes to preserve the language.
“You can say things in our language that you can’t say in English,” she said.
Testing out a language app in February 013
013 is a music venue in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The venue opened in 1998 and replaced the ''Noorderligt'', the ''Bat Cave'' and the ''MuziekKantenWinkel''. 013 is the largest popular music venue in the southern Netherlands.
There are two concer ...
she said she couldn’t wait to see it being used among young people in the tribe.
References
Bibliography
*
Bright, William. (1965). "
eview of ''A history of Palaihnihan phonology'' by D. L. Olmsted" ''Language'', ''41'' (1), 175–178.
*Bauman, James. 1980. Introduction to the Pit River language and culture. Anchorage, AK: National Bilingual Materials Development Center, University of Alaska.
*Good, Jeff. (2004). "A sketch of Atsugewi phonology."
Boston, Massachusetts. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, January 8 – January 11).
*Good, Jeff, Teresa McFarland, and Mary Paster. (2003). "Reconstructing Achumawi and Atsugewi: Proto-Palaihnihan revisited."
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...
. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, January 2 – January 5).
*Kroeber, Alfred L. 1925. ''Handbook of the Indians of California''. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 78.
*
Mithun, Marianne
Marianne Mithun (born 1946) is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is professor of linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position since 19 ...
. (1999). ''The Languages of Native North America''.
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...
:
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambr ...
. (hbk); .
*Nevin, Bruce E. (1991). "Obsolescence in Achumawi: Why Uldall Too?". Papers from the American Indian Languages Conferences, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, July and August 1991. Occasional Papers on Linguistics 16:97-127. Department of Linguistics, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
*Nevin, Bruce E. (1998).
Aspects of Pit River phonology'. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics.
*Nevin, Bruce E. (In review). "Why Proto-Palaihnihan is neither". 10.13140/RG.2.2.33917.20966.
*Olmsted, David L. (1954). "Achumawi-Atsugewi non-reciprocal intelligibility." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''20'', 181–184.
*Olmsted, David L. (1956). "Palaihnihan and Shasta I: Labial stops." ''Language'', ''32'' (1), 73–77.
*Olmsted, David L. (1957). "Palaihnihan and Shasta II: Apical stops." ''Language'', ''33'' (2), 136–138.
*Olmsted, David L. (1959). "Palaihnihan and Shasta III: Dorsal stops." ''Language'', ''35'' (4), 637–644.
*Olmsted, David L. (1964). "A history of Palaihnihan phonology." ''University of California Publications in Linguistics'' (Vol. 35).
Berkeley:
University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...
.
Dictionaries
*Bauman, James. Ruby Miles, and Ike Leaf. Pit River Teaching Dictionary. Anchorage, AK: National Bilingual Materials Development Center, University of Alaska.
*Olmsted, D. L. 1966. Achumawi dictionary. Berkeley: University of California Press.
External links
* Bruce Nevi
(Achumawi database, texts, and Android app)* Bruce Nevin (1998
''Aspects of Pit River Phonology''* Jeff Good, Teresa McFarland & Mary Paster (2003
"Reconstructing Achumawi and Atsugewi"Achumawi languageoverview at the
Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...
*
OLAC Resources in and about the Achumawi language*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Achumawi Language
Critically endangered languages
Pit River tribes
Palaihnihan languages
Indigenous languages of California
Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas