Maiduan (also Maidun, Pujunan) is a small
endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...
language family of northeastern
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
.
Family division
The Maiduan consists of 4 languages:
* Maiduan
**
Maidu (also known as Maidu proper, Northeastern Maidu, Mountain Maidu)
**
Chico (also known as Valley Maidu)
**
Konkow (also known as Northwestern Maidu)
**
Nisenan (also known as Southern Maidu)
The languages have similar
sound systems Sound system may refer to:
Technology media
* Sound reinforcement system, a system for amplifying audio for an audience
* High fidelity, a sound system intended for accurate reproduction of music in the home
* Public address system, an institution ...
but differ significantly in terms of grammar. They are not
mutually intelligible, even though many works often refer to all of the speakers of these languages as ''Maidu''. The Chico dialects are little known due to scanty documentation, so their precise genetic relationship to the other languages probably cannot be determined (Mithun 1999), and in any case may have been not a fourth Maiduan language, but widely divergent dialects of Konkow (Ultan 1967).
Three of the languages went
extinct
Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...
by approximately the year 2000. Konkow was reported to have 3 elderly speakers in 2007.
Genetic relations
Maiduan is often considered in various
Penutian
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language family, language families that includes many Native Americans in the United States, Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington ( ...
phylum proposals. It was one of the original members of California Penutian (the Penutian "core").
See also
*
Maidu
References
Bibliography
*
Callaghan, Catherine A. (1997). "Evidence for Yok-Utian", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 18–64.
* Heizer, Robert F. (1966). ''Languages, territories, and names of California Indian tribes''. University of California Press.
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); .
* Shipley, William. (1961). "Maidu and Nisenan: A Binary Survey", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1961), pp. 46–51.
* Ultan, Russell. (1964). "Proto-Maidun phonology," ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 1964) pp. 355-370.
* Ultan, Russell. (1967)
"Konkow Grammar,"unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley
External links
Maidu, An Illustrative Sketch
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*Language
Indigenous languages of California
Penutian languages
Language families