Tillamook language

Tillamook
Spoken in	United States
Region	Northwestern Oregon
Extinct	Last speaker died circa 1970; the ethnic population now uses English as their native language
Language family	Salishan Coast Tillamook
Language codes
ISO 639-3	til

Tillamook is an extinct Salishan language, formerly spoken by the Tillamook people in northwestern Oregon, United States. The last fluent speaker is believed to have died in the 1970s; between 1965 and 1972, in an effort to prevent the language being destroyed, a group of researchers from the University of Hawaii interviewed the few remaining Tillamook and created a 120-page dictionary.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	ə
Low	æ	ɑ

Consonants

	Alveolar		Postalveolar / palatal	Velar		Uvular		Glottal
	Central	Lateral		Unrounded	Rounded*	Unrnd.	Rnd.*
Stop	t			k	kʷ	q	qʷ	ʔ
Ejective	tʼ			kʼ	kʷʼ	qʼ	qʷʼ
Affricate	t͡s		t͡ʃ
Ejective affricate	t͡sʼ	t͡ɬʼ	t͡ʃʼ
Fricative	s	ɬ	ʃ	x	xʷ	χ	χʷ	h
Nasal	n
Approximant		l	j		w

*The "rounded" consonants, including /w/, are not labialized—the effect is created entirely inside the mouth by cupping the tongue.

Bibliography

• Thompson, Lawrence C.; M. Terry Thompson (1966). "A Fresh Look at Tillamook Phonology". International Journal of American Linguistics 32 (4): 313–319. doi:10.1086/464920. 

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:til
• University of Oregon: The Tillamook