Washo language

Washo
wá:šiw ʔítlu
Spoken in	United States
Region	Nevada
Native speakers	252  (2000)
Language family	Hokan Washo
Language codes
ISO 639-2	was
ISO 639-3	was
Pre-contact distribution of the Washo language

The Washo language (Washo: wá:šiw ʔítlu) (also Washoe) 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 are very few speakers of Washo today (only 10 according to some; 252 according to the 2000 US Census), there are Washo-language programs aimed at increasing the number of proficient speakers. The speakers of Washo at the end of the twentieth century included 64 individuals between the ages of 5 and 17, 4 of whom have limited English proficiency.

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 California sprachbunds.

Regional variation

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."

Genetic relations

Washo was originally believed to be a language isolate. That is, it shared no link and is was not related to any other language. Some Washo still believe their language is a language isolate due to their belief that they were the first to inhabit the area. This would make them and their language older than that of the neighboring tribes, who according to the Washo, moved in around them from elsewhere, thus making their languages related in no way. Though Washo is indeed not in the same language family as any of its three direct neighboring languages, Northern Paiute is a Numic language (Uto-Aztecan), Maidu is Maiduan, and Miwok is Utian, it is now classified as a distinct branch of the Hokan language group.

The primary grammar used to describe the Washo language is A Grammar of the Washo Language as written by William Horton Jacobsen, Jr. for dissertation purposes at the University of California, Berkeley. The dissertation was written in 1964 and covers the entire language of Washo, as there are no known dialects.

Phonetics and phonology

Vowels

There are six distinct vowel qualities found in the Washo language. The sound quality of a vowel is dependent upon their length and the character of the consonant they precede, as well as the stress put on the vowel. Following is a list of short allophones of the most common vowels as well as two vowels created by the blending of a vowel and y.

Wašiw Vowel Sounds

Wašiw Letter	English Equivalent	English Example	Wašiw Example
á or a	/ɑː/	father	?áma? (grandmother on father’s side)
é or e	/ɛ/	bed	mégel (Indian tea)
í or i	/iː/	seed	míši milí:giyi (I see you to more than one person)
ó or o	/oʊ/	go	mókó (shoes)
ú or u	/uː/	food	gú?u (grandmother on mother’s side)
ɨ	/ə/	just	ćɨkɨ (spider)
ay	/aɪ/	price	máyŋa (fawn)
ey	/eɪ/	day	béyu (both to pay and younger brother, in context)

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

In Washo, vowels can have either long or short length qualities; the longer quality is noted by appending a /:/ to the vowel, as in the above example míši milí:giyi. Vowels with such a mark are usually pronounced twice its normal length. However, vowels pronounced this way may not always be followed by a colon.

Consonants

Wašiw consonants are, for the most part, the same as in English. However, English blends, such as ng, and digraphs, such as sh, are represented by a single letter. Blends not represented by a single letter in Wašiw almost always tend to occur in borrowed English words, such as the nd in ḱindí (candy).

Wašiw Consonant Sounds

Wašiw Letter	English Equivalent	English Example	Wašiw Example
ć	/ts/	tsunami	ćali? (Cottontail rabbit)
š	/ʃ/	ship	wašiw (the Washoe)
ŋ	/ŋ/	lung	ŋaŋawŋ (children)
ḱ	blend of /k/ and /ɡ/	no English equivalent	biḱus (baby basket)
ṕ	blend of /p/ and /b/	no English equivalent	ṕisew (great grandparent, sibling of great grandparent)
?	/ʔ/	uh-oh	Kókši? (Sego lilly)

Morphology and Syntax

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 -leg 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, "dabóʔo lew búʔlegi” (the white man fed us’’).

Vowel Suffixes

Suffix Letter	Meaning	Used	Example
-ay?	intemediate past	earlier than the current day, but not the distant past	di hulúyay (I fell over)
-gul	long ago, remembered past	within the lifetime of the speaker	gedí yeyemi ʔúšgulaygi (They used to call him that)
-lul	distant past	before the lifetime of the speaker	ga móŋil halúliya (They planted it here long ago)
-a	recent past	action just finished	lép'amaʔ (I got there)
-i	present	actions currently in progress	míši milí:giyi (I see you)
-aša	near future	soon	dimú sek hayášaʔi (I will choke him)
-ti?	intermediate future	within the day	ʔilc’ác’imiʔ etiʔi (It’s getting green. It will be green)
-gab	distant future	the following day or later	milí:gi gabigi (I’ll see you. See you later)

Nouns

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

Noun Prefixes

Vowel-initial Prefix	Usage	Example
l-	first-person possessive	láŋal (my/our house)
m-	second-person possessive	máŋal (your house)
t'-	third-person possessive	t'áŋal (his/her/its/their house)
d-	unidentified possessive	dáŋal (somebody’s house)
Consonant-initial Prefix	Usage	Example
di-	first-person possessive	diháŋa (my/our mouth)
?um-	second-person possessive	?umháŋa (your mouth)
da-	third-person possessive (when first vowel of the object is a or o)	daháŋa (his/her/its/their mouth) dak’ómol (his/her/its/their ball)
de-	third person possessive (when first vowel of the object is e, i, ɨ, or u')	deMélɨw (his/her/its/their belt) dedí:geš (his/her/its/their net) debɨk’ɨ (his/her/its/their grandmother’s sister) degúšuʔ (his/her/its/their pet)
	unidentified possessive	háŋa (somebody’s mouth)

See also

• Washoe tribe
• Native American languages

Bibliography

• Bright, William O. “North American Indian Languages.” Encyclopedia Britannica 2007: 762-767.
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• d'Azevedo, Warren L. (1986). "Washoe" in Great Basin, Warren L. d'Azevedo, ed. pp. 466–498. Volume 11 in Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-004578-9/0160045754.
• Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-048774-9.
• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
• Greenberg, Joseph H. Language in the Americas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).
• Jacobsen, William. A Grammar of the Washo Language. Diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1964. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1964. Print.
• Jacobsen, William H. (1986). "Washoe Language" in Great Basin, Warren L. d'Azevedo, ed. pp. 107–112. Volume 11 in Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-004578-9/0160045754.
• Jacobsen, William H. 1996. Beginning Washo. Occasional Papers 5: Nevada State Museum.
• *Kaufman, Terrence. 1988. "A Research Program for Reconstructing Proto-Hokan: First Gropings." In Scott DeLancey, ed. Papers from the 1988 Hokan–Penutian Languages Workshop, pp. 50–168. Eugene, Oregon: Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon. (University of Oregon Papers in Linguistics. Publications of the Center for Amerindian Linguistics and Ethnography 1.)
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• The Washo Project. The University of Chicago, 2008. Web. 4 May 2011
• Yu, Alan C. L. “Quantity, stress and reduplication in Washo.” Phonology 22.03 (2006): 437.

External links

• University of Chicago Washo Revitalization Project
• The Rosetta Project
• Speaking the Language of the Land
• Reno Linguist Foremost Expert on Washoe Language
• Ethnologue: Washo
• Washo language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages