The Chimakuan languages are a group of extinct languages that were spoken in northwestern

Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a U.S. state, state in the Northwestern United States, Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first President of the United States, U.S. p ...

, United States, on the

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a ...

. They were spoken by

Chimakum The Chimakum, also spelled Chemakum and Chimacum are a near extinct Native American people (known to themselves as Aqokúlo and sometimes called the Port Townsend Indians), who lived in the northeastern portion of the Olympic Peninsula in Washin ...

, Quileute and Hoh tribes. They are part of the Mosan

sprachbund A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lan ...

, and one of its languages is famous for having no

nasal consonants In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast major ...

. The two languages were about as close as English and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

. Due to proximity, the Chimakum languages are also similar to

Wakashan languages Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As is typical of the Nor ...

Family division

* Chemakum (also known as Chimakum or Chimacum) ''(†)'' * Quileute (also known as Quillayute) ''(†)'' Chemakum is now

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

. It was spoken until the 1940s on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula between

Port Townsend Port Townsend is a city on the Quimper Peninsula in Jefferson County, Washington, United States. The population was 10,148 at the 2020 United States Census. It is the county seat and only incorporated city of Jefferson County. In addition t ...

and

Hood Canal Hood Canal is a fjord forming the western lobe, and one of the four main basins,Chimakum The Chimakum, also spelled Chemakum and Chimacum are a near extinct Native American people (known to themselves as Aqokúlo and sometimes called the Port Townsend Indians), who lived in the northeastern portion of the Olympic Peninsula in Washin ...

people, such as the nearby Twana word ''čə́bqəb'' (earlier ). Quileute is now extinct. During the late 20th and early 21st centuries a revitalization effort began, and it is today spoken as a second language by a relatively small amount of the Quileute tribe on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula, south of

Cape Flattery Cape Flattery () is the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States. It is in Clallam County, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula, where the Strait of Juan de Fuca joins the Pacific Ocean. It is also part of the Makah Reservation, and ...

. The name Quileute comes from ''kʷoʔlí·yot , the name of a village at La Push.

Phonology

The Chimakuan languages have phonemic inventories similar to other languages of the Mosan sprachbund, with three vowels,

ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. So ...

uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not p ...

s, and

lateral affricate A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larr ...

s. However, both languages have typological oddities: Chemakum had no simple

velar consonant Velars are consonants place of articulation, articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the Soft palate, velum). Since the velar region of the roof of ...

s, and Quileute has no

Proto-Chimakuan

The (pre-)Proto-Chimakuan sound system contained three vowels, long and short, and lexical stress. It had the following consonants. In Proto-Chimakuan the series occurred (mostly?) before the vowel . On the other hand, occurred (mostly?) before the vowels . These series may have become separate phonemes before Chimakum and Quileute split, but if so, it seems clear that they had been

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

s not long before then. In Quileute the stress became fixed to the penultimate syllable, though subsequent changes made it somewhat unpredictable, and the glottalized sonorants became allophonic with glottal stop-sonorant sequences and so can no longer be considered phonemic. Open syllables developed long vowels. Perhaps as recently as the late 19th century, the nasals became voiced plosives . In Chemakum, stressed vowels frequently acquired glottal stops; depalatalized to , while palatalized to ; sonorants lost their glottalization; and the approximants hardened to in the environment of stressed vowels.

Morphology

There are more than 20 known common inflectional suffixed and about 200 derivational suffixes. No common prefixes are known. In some cases, infixes are used in both languages.

Lexicon

Below is a table listing numerals from 1 to 10 in Chemakum and Quileute:

References

Bibliography

* Andrade, Manuel J. (1933). ''Quileute''. New York: Columbia University Press. (Extract from ''Handbook of American Indian Languages'' (Vol. 3, pp. 151–292); Andrade's doctoral dissertation). * Andrade, Manuel J. (1953). Notes on the relations between Chemakum and Quileute. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''19'', 212–215. * Andrade, Manuel J.; & Frachtenberg, Leo J. (1931). ''Quileute texts''. Columbia University contributions to anthropology (Vol. 12). New York: Columbia University Press. * Boas, Franz. (1892). Notes on the Chemakum language. ''American Anthropologist'', ''5'', 37–44. * Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . {{DEFAULTSORT:Chimakuan Languages Language families Mosan languages Endangered Chimakuan languages