Area where the Utian languages were spoken
Mutsun is a name of one sub-group of the indigenous Ohlone people of California, as well as the name of the language they spoke.
Mutsun (also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan) is an extinct Utian language in the Ohlone/Costanoan language family that was spoken in Northern California by the division of the Ohlone who lived in the Mission San Juan Bautista area (classified "Southern Ohlone" in ISO639-3). Ascencion Solorsano, who died in 1930, was the last native speaker of Mutsun. Mutsun went extinct from a gradual process of the Mutsun being forced to switch to speaking Spanish and English. The Spanish wrote a grammar of the language, and linguist John Peabody Harrington collected very extensive notes on the language from Solorsano. Harrington's field notes formed the basis of the grammar of Mutsun written by Marc Okrand as a University of California dissertation in 1977, which to this day remains the only grammar ever written of any Costanoan language. Many Mutsun people who live in California today are trying to restore their language.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
|
Front |
Back |
| Close |
i /i/ |
u /u/ |
| Close-mid |
|
o /o/ |
| Open-mid |
e /ɛ/ |
|
| Open |
|
a /ɑ/ |
Vocabulary
| English |
Mutsun |
| one |
hemetca |
| two |
tRhin |
| three |
kaphan |
| four |
utRit |
| five |
parwes |
| six |
nakitci |
| seven |
takitci |
| eight |
tayitmin |
| nine |
pakki |
| ten |
tansakte |
References
- Okrand, Marc. 1977. "Mutsun Grammar". Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
External links
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