Barbareño () is one of the
Chumashan languages, a group of
Native American languages spoken almost exclusively in the area of
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara (, meaning ) is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting A ...
. The closely related
Ineseño
The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians is a Federally recognized tribes, federally recognized tribe of Chumash people, Chumash, an Indigenous people of California, in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara.Pritzker 122 Their nam ...
() may have been a dialect of the same language. A dialect of the Barbareño language was also "spoken at
San Emigdio near
Buena Vista Lake
Buena Vista Lake was a fresh-water lake in Kern County, California, in the Tulare Lake Basin in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California.
Buena Vista Lake was the second largest of several similar lakes in the Tulare Lake basin, and was fed ...
" in the southern Central Valley. This dialect, called Emigdiano, "was heavily influenced by
Buena Vista Yokuts." Barbareño lost its last known
native speaker
Native Speaker may refer to:
* ''Native Speaker'' (novel), a 1995 novel by Chang-Rae Lee
* ''Native Speaker'' (album), a 2011 album by Canadian band Braids
* Native speaker, a person using their first language or mother tongue
* Native spea ...
in 1965 with the death of
Mary Yee.
Both Barbareño and Ineseño are currently undergoing processes of
language revitalization
Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community group ...
.
An Ineseño dictionary was published in 2007.
Language revitalization
As of 2013, the Barbareno Chumash Council is engaged in ongoing efforts to revive the language. Two of its members are language apprentices and teachers.
Wishtoyo Chumash Village, in
Malibu, California
Malibu ( ; ; ) is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, about west of downtown Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate, its strip of beaches stretching along the Pacific Ocean coa ...
, announced the opening of its Šmuwič Language School in 2010.
[
]
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
References
Further reading
*
* Applegate, Richard. (1972)
''Ineseño Chumash Grammar.''(Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley).
* Beeler, M. S. 1976. Barbareno Chumash: a farrago. In Langdon, Margaret and Silver, Shirley, eds. Hokan Studies: Papers from the 1st Conference on Hokan Languages held in San Diego, California April 23–25, 1970, pp. 251–270. The Hague: Mouton.
* Wash, Suzanne. (1995). Productive Reduplication in Barbareño Chumash. (Master's thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara; 210 + x pp.)
* Wash, Suzanne. (2001). Adverbial Clauses in Barbareño Chumash Narrative Discourse. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara; 569 + xxii pp.)
External links
Barbareño 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 ...
*
Chumash Barbareño Smithsonian Archives
OLAC resources in and about the Barbareño languageOLAC resources in and about the Ineseño languageIneseño basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barbareno Language
Chumashan languages
Indigenous languages of California
Extinct languages of North America
Native American language revitalization
History of Santa Barbara County, California
Languages extinct in the 1960s
1960s disestablishments in California