Coast Miwok was one of the
Miwok
The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, who traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family. The word ...
languages spoken in
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 ...
, from
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the United States, U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, California, San Jose, and Oakland, Ca ...
to
Bodega Bay
Bodega Bay ( es, Bahía Bodega) is a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California in the United States. It is approximately across and is located approximately northwest of San Francisco and west of Santa ...
. The
Marin and Bodega varieties may have been separate languages. All of the population has shifted to
English.
Grammar
According to Catherine A. Callaghan's ''Bodega Miwok Dictionary'', nouns have the following
case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
s, expressed with suffixes: present
subjective
Subjective may refer to:
* Subjectivity, a subject's personal perspective, feelings, beliefs, desires or discovery, as opposed to those made from an independent, objective, point of view
** Subjective experience, the subjective quality of conscio ...
,
possessive
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...
,
allative
In grammar, the allative case (; abbreviated ; from Latin ''allāt-'', ''afferre'' "to bring to") is a type of locative grammatical case. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages that do not make fine ...
,
locative
In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
,
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
,
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instr ...
, and
comitative
In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", ...
. Sentences are most commonly
subject-verb-object, but Callaghan says that "syntax is relatively free."
Phonology
The following is the Bodega dialect:
Phonemes in parentheses are introduced from Spanish loan words. Allophones of introduced sounds, /b ɡ/ include /β ɣ/.
References
* Callaghan, Catherine A. 1970. ''Bodega Miwok Dictionary''. Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Coast Miwok Indians. "''Rodriguez-Nieto Guide" Sound Recordings (California Indian Library Collections), LA006''. Berkeley: California Indian Library Collections, 1993. "''Sound recordings reproduced from the Language Archive sound recordings at the Language Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley''".
* Keeling, Richard. "''Ethnographic Field Recordings at Lowie Museum of Anthropology''," 1985. Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. v. 2. North-Central California: Pomo, Wintun, Nomlaki, Patwin, Coast Miwok, and Lake Miwok Indians
External links
Coast Miwokat 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 ...
Coast Miwok, California Language ArchiveOLAC resources in and about the Coast Miwok languageCoast (Bodega) Miwok basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Miwok
Utian languages
Extinct languages of North America
History of the San Francisco Bay Area
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