Cowlitz language
| Cowlitz | |
|---|---|
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Southwestern Washington |
| Ethnicity | 200 Cowlitz people (1990)[1] |
| Extinct | maybe 2 speakers in 1990[1] |
| Revival | the 110 listed in 2010 census[2] are not native speakers |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | cow |
| Glottolog | cowl1242 |
The Cowlitz language is a member of the Tsamosan branch of the Coast Salish family of Salishan languages.
The Cowlitz people
The Cowlitz people were originally two distinct tribes: the Lower Cowlitz and the Upper Cowlitz. Only the Lower Cowlitz spoke Cowlitz; the Upper Cowlitz, a Sahaptin tribe, spoke a dialect of Yakama.
Vocabulary
Cowlitz is most similar to Lower Chehalis, another Tsamosan language, although it does contains some oddities, such as the word for one, utsus (in contrast to the Lower Chehalis paw).
| English | Cowlitz |
|---|---|
| Lower Cowlitz tribe | Sł'púlmš |
| one (number) | utsus |
| two | salli |
| three | kałi |
| four | mus |
References
- ^ a b Cowlitz[dead link] at Ethnologue (14th ed., 2000).
- ^ Cowlitz at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- Native-Languages.org.
- Kinkade, Dale. Cowlitz Dictionary And Grammatical Sketch. Missoula: University of Montana Press, 2004.
See also
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