Kumeyaay (Kumiai), also known as Central Diegueño, Kamia, and Campo, is the Native American language spoken by the

Kumeyaay The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...

people of southern

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

and

Imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texa ...

counties in California. Hinton (1994:28) suggested a conservative estimate of 50 native speakers of Kumeyaay. A more liberal estimate (including speakers of

Ipai The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...

and

Tipai The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...

), supported by the results of the Census 2000, is 110 people in the US, including 15 persons under the age of 18. There were 377 speakers reported in the 2010 Mexican census, including 88 who called their language "Cochimi". Kumeyaay belongs to the

Yuman language family The Quechan (or Yuma) (Quechan language, Quechan: ''Kwatsáan'' 'those who descended') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and ...

and to the Delta–California branch of that family. Kumeyaay and its neighbors,

to the north and

to the south, were often considered to be dialects of a single Diegueño language, but the current consensus among linguists seems to be that at least three distinct languages are present within the dialect chain (e.g., Langdon 1990). Confusingly, Kumeyaay is commonly used as a designation both for the central language of this family and for the Ipai-Kumeyaay-Tipai people as a whole. Tipai is also commonly used as a collective designation for speakers of both Kumeyaay and Tipai proper.

Documentation

In 1999, published documentation for the Kumeyaay language appeared to be limited to a few texts. As of May 2014, online Kumeyaay language lessons were available. A "dictionary of all five dialects of Kumeyaay spoken in

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

" is in preparation. Kumeyaay language stories are recorded at the Kumeyaay museum in

Tecate Tecate () is a city in Tecate Municipality, Baja California. It is across the Mexico-US border from Tecate, California. As of 2019, the city had a population of 108,860 inhabitants, while the metropolitan area has a population of 132,406 inha ...

Phonology

Consonants

Alveolar sounds /t, s, n, r/ can also be heard as post-alveolar ̠, s̠, n̠, r̠

Vowels

Vowel length may also be distributed.

References

Bibliography

Leanne Hinton Leanne Hinton (born 28 September 1941) is an American linguist and emerita professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. Education and career Hinton received her PhD in 1977 from UC San Diego, with a dissertation entitle ...

. 1994. ''Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages''. Heyday Books, Berkeley, California. * Langdon, Margaret. 1990. "Diegueño: how many languages?" In ''Proceedings of the 1990 Hokan–Penutian Languages Workshop'', edited by James E. Redden, pp. 184–190. University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. * Mithun, Marianne. 1999. ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge University Press.

External links

* * * ELAR archive o
Documentation of the Baja California Yuman Languages Kumeyaay and Ko'alh
Kumeyaay Indigenous languages of California Yuman–Cochimí languages Articles citing INALI {{NorthAm-native-stub Languages of Mexico