Washo Language

Washo (or Washoe; endonym ) is an endangered Native American language isolate spoken by the Washo on the California–Nevada border in the drainages of the Truckee and Carson Rivers, especially around Lake Tahoe. While there were only 20 elderly native speakers of Washo as of 2011,Victor Golla (2011) ''California Indian Languages'' since 1994 there had been a small immersion school that has produced a number of moderately fluent younger speakers. The immersion school has since closed its doors and the language program now operates through the Cultural Resource Department for the Washoe Tribe. The language is still very much endangered; however, there has been a renaissance in the language revitalization movement as many of the students who attended the original immersion school have become teachers.

Ethnographic Washo speakers belonged to the Great Basin culture area and they were the only non- Numic group of that area. The language has borrowed from the neighboring Uto-Aztecan, Maiduan and Miwokan languages and is connected to both the Great Basin and Northern California sprachbunds.

History

In 2012, Lakeview Commons Park in South Lake Tahoe was renamed in the Washo language. "The Washoe Tribe has presented the name (pronounced approx. ) which, in native language, means "all the people's place." It is a name the Tribe would like to gift to El Dorado County and South Lake Tahoe as a symbol of peace, prosperity and goodness."

Classification

Washo is usually considered a language isolate. That is, it shares no demonstrated link with any other language, including its three direct neighboring languages, Northern Paiute (a Numic language of Uto-Aztecan), Maidu ( Maiduan), and Sierra Miwok ( Utian). It is sometimes classified as a Hokan language, but this language family is not universally accepted among specialists, nor is Washo's connection to it.WA SHE SHU: "The Washoe People", Past and Present
The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California

The language was first described in ''A Grammar of the Washo Language'' by William H. Jacobsen, Jr., in a University of California, Berkeley, PhD dissertation and this remains the sole complete description of the language. There is no significant dialect variation. (Jacobsen's lifelong work with Washo is described at the University of Nevada Oral History Program.)

Dialects

Washo shows very little geographic variation. Jacobsen (1986:108) wrote, "When there are two variants of a feature, generally one is found in a more northerly area and the other in a more southerly one, but the lines separating the two areas for the different features do not always coincide."

Phonology

Vowels

There are six distinct vowel qualities found in the Washo language, each of which occurs long and short. The sound quality of a vowel is dependent upon their length and the consonant they precede, as well as the stress put on the vowel.

Vowels marked with the acute accent ( ´ ) are pronounced with stress, such as in the Washo (summer).

In Washo, vowels can have either long or short length qualities; the longer quality is noted by appending a colon to the vowel, as in the above example . Vowels with such a mark are usually pronounced for twice the normal length. This can be seen in the difference between the words (shoes) (knee). However, vowels pronounced this way may not always be followed by a colon.

Jacobsen described in detail various vowel alternations that distinguished the Washo speech communities.

Consonants

Sequences not represented by a single letter in Washo almost always tend to occur in borrowed English words, such as the ''nd'' in (''candy'').

In the area around Woodfords, California, the local Washo dialect substituted for , thus, 'bird' was pronounced ''thithu''.Caitlin Keliiaa. 2012. "Washiw Wagayay Maŋal: Reweaving the Washoe Language," University of California, Los Angeles MA thesis.

Morphology

Washo has a complex tense system.

Washo uses partial or total reduplication of verbs or nouns to indicate repetitive aspect or plural number. Washo uses both prefixation and suffixation on nouns and verbs.

Verbs

Verbal inflection is rich with a large number of tenses. Tense is usually carried by a suffix that attaches to the verb. The tense suffix may signal recent past, intermediate past, the long-ago-but-remembered past, the distant past, the intermediate future, or the distant future. For example, the suffix indicates that the verb describes an event that took place in the recent past, usually earlier the previous day as seen in the Washo sentence, ('the white man fed us').

Nouns

Possession in Washo is shown by prefixes added to the object. There are two sets of prefixes added: the first set if the object begins with a vowel and the second set if the object begins with a consonant.

See also

* Washoe tribe
* Native American languages

References

Sources

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Further reading

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External links

University of Chicago Washo Revitalization Project
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Washo Online Lexicon
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Washo basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

Washo language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages

OLAC resources in and about the Washo language

{{North American languages

Language isolates of North America
Indigenous languages of Nevada
Indigenous languages of California
Endangered languages of the United States
Indigenous languages of the North American Great Basin
Hokan languages
Endangered Indigenous languages of the Americas
Washoe
Endangered language isolates
Native American language revitalization