Molala language

Molala
Molale
Native to	United States
Region	Central Oregon and Washington
Ethnicity	Molala people
Extinct	1958 with the death of Fred Yelkes (1885–1958)
Language family	Plateau Penutian Molala
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mbe
Glottolog	mola1238

Molala (Molele, Molalla) is the extinct and poorly attested Plateau Penutian language of the Molala people of Oregon and Washington. It is first attested along the Deschutes River, and later moved to the Molalla and Santiam rivers, and to the headwaters of the Umpqua and Rogue rivers. It was once thought to be close to Cayuse.

Dialects

There were three known dialects:

• Northern Molala, spoken in southern Oregon in the Cascade Range
• Upper Santiam Molala, spoken along the upper Santiam River in the Cascades in central Oregon.
• Southern Molala, spoken in southern Oregon in the Cascade Range

Phonology

The phonology of the Molala language:

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Lateral	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosive	plain	p	t			k	q	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ			kʰ	qʰ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ			kʼ	qʼ
Nasal		m	n			ŋ
Affricate	plain		ts	tɬ
	ejective		tsʼ
Fricative		ɸ	s	ɬ		x		h
Approximant		w		l	j

Vowels

	Short	Long
Close	i	iː
Open	a~e	aː
Back	u	uː

/i/ and /a/ can also shift to /ə/.

Grammar

Molala is a verb-heavy polysynthetic language.

Case

Molala nouns have seven cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, instrumental, locative, allative, and ablative.

External links

• Molale (Molalla)
• OLAC resources in and about the Molale language