The Tongva language (also known as Gabrielino, Gabrieleño, or Kizh) is an extinct and revitalizing

Uto-Aztecan language The Uto-Aztecan languages are a family of native American languages, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family reflects the common ...

spoken by the

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous peoples of California, Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Channel Islands of California, Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . In the precolonial era, the peop ...

, a Native American people who have lived in and around modern-day

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

for centuries. It has not been a language of everyday conversation since the 1940s. The

Gabrielino The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . In the precolonial era, the people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by ...

people now speak English but a few are attempting to revive their language by using it in everyday conversation and ceremonial contexts. Presently, Gabrielino is also being used in language revitalization classes and in some public discussion regarding religious and environmental issues. Tongva is closely related to Serrano. The names of several cities and neighborhoods in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

are of Tongva origin, and include

Pacoima Pacoima (Tataviam language: ''Pakoinga'', meaning "entrance") is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley region of LA. Geography Location Pacoima is bordered by the Los Angele ...

, Tujunga,

Topanga Topanga (Tongva: ''Topaa'nga'') is an unincorporated community in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located in the Santa Monica Mountains, the community exists in Topanga Canyon and the surrounding hills. The narrow southern ...

Azusa AZUSA refers to a ground-based radar tracking system installed at Cape Canaveral, Florida and the NASA Kennedy Space Center. AZUSA was named after the southern California town Azusa, California where the system was devised in the early 1950s. ...

, ''Cahuenga'' in

Cahuenga Pass The Cahuenga Pass (, ; Tongva: ''Kawé’nga''), also known by its Spanish name Paseo de Cahuenga, is a low mountain pass through the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Hollywood Hills district of the City of Los Angeles, Califor ...

and ''Cucamonga'' in

Rancho Cucamonga Rancho Cucamonga was a Ranchos of California, Mexican land grant in present-day San Bernardino County, California, given in 1839 to the dedicated soldier, smuggler and politician Tiburcio Tapia by Mexican governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. The gra ...

. The last fluent native speakers of Tongva lived in the early 20th century. The language is primarily documented in the unpublished field notes of

John Peabody Harrington John Peabody Harrington (April 29, 1884 – October 21, 1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of whic ...

made during that time. The "J.P. Harrington Project", developed by

The Smithsonian The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, education and research centers, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trus ...

through

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

, approximately 6,000 pages of his notes on the Tongva language, were coded for documentation by a Tongva member, who took three years to accomplish the task. Alleged native speakers of Tongva who have died as late as the 1970s have not been verified as having been fluent speakers. The

dwarf planet A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be hydrostatic equilibrium, gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve clearing the neighbourhood, orbital dominance like the ...

50000 Quaoar Quaoar ( minor-planet designation: 50000 Quaoar) is a ringed dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of many icy planetesimals beyond Neptune. It has an elongated ellipsoidal shape with an average diameter of , about half the size of the d ...

was named after the Tongva creator god, also called Chinigchinix.

Language revitalization

The

language is a subgroup of

Takic The Takic languages are a putative group of Uto-Aztecan languages historically spoken by a number of Indigenous peoples of California, Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Takic is grouped with the Tübatulabal language, Tubatulabal, Hopi la ...

, a subfamily of Uto-Aztecan, which is usually divided into three subgoups: Serrano-Kitanemuk, Gabrielino (including the Fernandeño dialect) and Cupan. As of 2012, members of the contemporary Tongva (Gabrieleño) tribal council are attempting to revive the language, by making use of written vocabularies, by comparison to better attested members of the

group to which Tongva belonged, and by offering classes. In 2004, Pamela Munro, now UCLA emeritus professor of linguistics, was asked to serve as a linguistic mentor to Tongva people who wanted to learn about their language at the Breath of Life Workshop, a biennial event in Berkeley staged by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. Since then, she has taught monthly Tongva language classes in which adults and children practice pronunciation, master the use of

grammatical particle In grammar, the term ''particle'' ( abbreviated ) has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function word (functor) associated with another word or phrase in order to impart meaning. Alth ...

s, sing songs and play word games. She calls her work "a reclamation effort" for the language. Munro has compiled a Tongva dictionary of over 1,000 words, and also maintains a Tongva language Facebook page to which she posts Tongva words, phrases and songs. According to Munro, there are no audio recordings of people speaking the Tongva language, but that there are a few scratched wax cylinder recordings of Tongva songs.

Phonology

Consonants

The following is a list of the consonants and vowels of the Tongva language as used by the Tongva Language Committee, based on linguist

Pamela Munro Pamela Munro (born May 23, 1947) is an American linguist who specializes in Native American languages. She is a distinguished research professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she has held a position ...

's interpretation of the fieldnotes of

J. P. Harrington. John Peabody Harrington (April 29, 1884 – October 21, 1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which ...

In parentheses is the spelling of the specific sound. There are multiple orthographies for the Tongva language. Consonants are used in loanwords.

Vowels

Morphology

Tongva is an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

language, where words use suffixes and multiple morphemes for a variety of purposes.

Vocabulary

Collected by C. Hart Merriam (1903)

Source:McCawley, William. ''The First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles''. Malki Museum Press, 1996 (Merriam refers to them as the Tongvā) ;Numbers # Po-koo # Wěh-hā # Pah-hā # Wah-chah # Mah-har # Pah-vah-hā # Wah-chah-kav-e-ah # Wa-ha's-wah-chah # Mah-ha'hr-kav-e-ah # Wa-hās-mah-hah'r # Wa-hā's-mah-hah'r-koi-po-koo # Wa-hā's-mah-hah'r-koi-wěh-hā ;

grizzly bear The grizzly bear (''Ursus arctos horribilis''), also known as the North American brown bear or simply grizzly, is a population or subspecies of the brown bear inhabiting North America. In addition to the mainland grizzly (''Ursus arctos horr ...

:hoó-nahr :hoon-nah (subject) :hoon-rah (object) ;

black bear Black bear or Blackbear may refer to: Animals * American black bear (''Ursus americanus''), a North American bear species * Asian black bear (''Ursus thibetanus''), an Asian bear species Music * Black Bear (band), a Canadian First Nations group ...

:pí-yah-hó-naht

Collected by Dr. Oscar Loew (1875)

Source: ;Numbers # pu-guʼ # ve-heʼ # paʼ-hi # va-tchaʼ # mahaʼr # pa-vaʼhe # vatchaʼ-kabyaʼ # vehesh-vatchaʼ # mahar-kabyaʼ # vehes-mahar # puku-hurura # vehe-hurura ;bear :unar

Collected by Alexander Taylor (1860)

Source: ;Numbers # po-koo # wa-hay # pa-hey # wat-sa # mahar # pawahe # wat-sa-kabiya # wa-hish-watchsa # mahar-cabearka # wa-hish-mar Taylor claims "they do not count farther than ten"

Collected by Charles Wilkes, USN (1838–1842)

Source: ;Numbers # pukū # wehē # pāhe # watsā ;bear :hundr

Other sources

*desert fox: ''erow''Native Languages of the Americas *Pacoima = from the root word ''Pako'' enter, meaning the entrance *Tujunga = from the root word old woman ''tux'uu'' Tujunga means Mountains of Health according to long-time residents. *Azusa = from the word -''shuuk 'Ashuuksanga'' = his grandmother

The Lord's Prayer

Source: The

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also known by its incipit Our Father (, ), is a central Christian prayer attributed to Jesus. It contains petitions to God focused on God’s holiness, will, and kingdom, as well as human needs, with variations across manusc ...

is called ''ʼEyoonak'' in Tongva. The following text was derived from old Mission records.

Toponymy

The table below gives the names of various missions in the Tongva language. Munro, Pamela, et al. ''Yaara' Shiraaw'ax 'Eyooshiraaw'a. Now You're Speaking Our Language: Gabrielino/Tongva/Fernandeño''. Lulu.com: 2008.

References

External links

Native-languages.org: Gabrieliño (Tongva) Language

Gabrielino language
— overview 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 ...

.
The Limu Project
— active in Native California languages revitalization.
2002 Tongva speech
spoken at

Cal Poly Pomona California State Polytechnic University Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) is a public polytechnic research university in Pomona, California, United States. It is the largest of the three polytechnic universities in the California State University syst ...

during the opening of a Tongva ethnobotanic garden; speech begins at 35:10.
Keepers of Indigenous Ways: Tongva Language History & classes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tongva, Language *Language Indigenous languages of California

Takic languages History of Los Angeles County, California History of Orange County, California History of San Bernardino County, California History of the San Fernando Valley Native American language revitalization