Arapaho language
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| Arapaho | ||
|---|---|---|
| Hinóno'eitíít | ||
| Spoken in | United States | |
| Region | The Wind River Reservation, Wyoming; Oklahoma | |
| Total speakers | ~1,000 | |
| Language family | Algic
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | arp | |
| ISO 639-3 | arp | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Arapaho language or "hinono'eitiit" (also "Arapahoe Language" and "hiinonoei'tiit") is a Plains Algonquian language (an areal rather than genetic grouping) spoken almost entirely by elders in Wyoming, and to a much lesser extent in Oklahoma.[1] It is in great danger of becoming extinct. As of 1996, there were approximately 1,000 speakers of the Northern Arapaho. [2] In 2008, it was reported that a school had been opened to teach the language to children. 22 children are currently[update] being taught there. The school was established as a matter of urgency, as no person aged under 55 was fluent in Arapaho at that point.[3]
Arapaho has diverged very significantly phonologically from its posited proto-language, Proto-Algonquian (Proto-Algonquian *maθkwa, "bear," became Arapaho wox, and Proto-Algonquian *weθari, "her husband," became Arapaho ííx).
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[edit] Sounds
As mentioned above, Arapaho is phonologically very distinct from Proto-Algonquian and other Algonquian languages, and even from languages spoken in the adjacent Great Basin.
[edit] Vowels
Arapaho has a series of four short vowels /ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ/ and four long vowels /iː ɛː ɔː uː/. In fact, /i/ and /u/ are practically allophones of a single phoneme, as, with very few exceptions, the former does not occur after velar consonants, and the latter only occurs after them.[4] It also contains three diphthongs, /ei/, /ɔu/, and /ie/. Almost uniquely among the world's languages, it has no low vowels, such as /a/.
[edit] Consonants
The consonant inventory of Arapaho is given in the table below. /j/ is normally transcribed as <y>, /tʃ/ as <c>, /ʔ/ as <'>, and /θ/ is sometimes written <3>.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | n | |||||
| Stop | b | t | tʃ | k | ʔ | |
| Fricative | θ | s | x | h | ||
| Approximant | j | w |
[edit] Prosody
Arapaho is a tonal language. Vowels can have a mid tone (unmarked), high tone (marked with an acute accent), or falling tone (marked with a circumflex).
[edit] Grammar
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This section requires expansion. |
[edit] Gros Ventre
Gros Ventre (also known as Atsina), a divergent dialect of Arapaho or closely related language, has three additional phonemes, /tʲ/, /ts/, and /bʲ/, and lacks the velar fricative /x/.
[edit] Other Dialects
Nawathinehena was another language of the Arapahoan group, with a phonological development quite different from either Gros Ventre or Arapaho proper. It has been identified as the former language of the Southern Arapaho, who switched to speaking Arapaho proper in the 19th century. However, the language is not well attested, being documented only in a vocabulary collected in 1899 by Alfred L. Kroeber from the Oklahoma Arapaho. Among its divergent features is the appearance of Proto-Algonquian */s/ as /t/.
Besawunena, also only attested from a wordlist collected by Kroeber, differs only slightly from Arapaho, but a few of its sound changes resemble those seen in Gros Ventre. It had speakers among the Northern Arapaho as recently as the late 1920s.
[edit] External links
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Wikibooks has more on the topic of |
- Arapaho language at Ethnologue
- Entry for Arapaho at Rosetta Project
- The Arapaho Language
- Arapaho Language Archives, with many dialogues and narratives in Arapaho with glosses
[edit] References
- ^ Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0195140508.
- ^ Hinton, Leanne (2001). The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Boston: Academic Press. ISBN 0123493536.
- ^ "Its Native Tongue Facing Extinction, Arapaho Tribe Teaches the Young", New York Times, October 18, 2008
- ^ Cowell and Moss, p. 14-15.
- Cowell, Andrew, and Moss Sr. Alonzo, 2008. The Arapaho Language. University Press of Colorado.
- Goddard, Ives. 1974. "An Outline of the Historical Phonology of Arapaho and Atsina." International Journal of American Linguistics 40:102-16.
- Goddard, Ives. 2001. "The Algonquian Languages of the Plains". Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 13: 71-79. Washington: the Smithsonian Institution.
- Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Picard, Marc. 1994. Principles and Methods in Historical Phonology: From Proto-Algonkian to Arapaho. Montreal and Kingston: McGill—Queen's University Press.
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Please help improve this article by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (October 2008) |
