Mutsun (also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan) is a Utian language spoken in Northern California. It was the primary language of a division of the

Ohlone people The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the ...

living in the Mission San Juan Bautista area. The Tamien Nation and band is currently working to restore the use of the language, using a modern alphabet.Warner, N., Luna, Q., & Butler, L. (2007). Ethics and Revitalization of Dormant Languages: The Mutsun Language.1(1). Retrieved fro

/ref>

Studies of the language

Maria Ascención Solórsano de Garcia y de Cervantes, the last known fluent speaker of Mutsun, amassed large amounts of language and cultural data specific to the Mutsun. The Spanish people, Spanish

Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta (1780–1842) was a Spanish Franciscan missionary and linguist notable for his work on native languages. Arroyo de la Cuesta was born in Cubo de Bureba, Burgos, Spain in 1780. He arrived in the Spanish territory of A ...

wrote extensively about the language's grammar, and linguist

John Peabody Harrington John Peabody Harrington (April 29, 1884 – October 21, 1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which ...

made very extensive notes on the language from Solórsano. Harrington's field notes formed the basis of the grammar of Mutsun written by Marc Okrand as a

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...

dissertation in 1977,Okrand, Marc. 1977.
Mutsun Grammar
. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. which to this day remains the only grammar ever written of any

Costanoan The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the ...

language. Scholars from the U.S., Germany, and the Netherlands have discussed methods that could facilitate the revitalization of Mutsun.Revitalization in a scattered language community: problems and methods from the perspective of Mutsun language revitalization, Authors: Natasha Warner / Quirina Luna / Lynnika Butler / Heather van Volkinburg, International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Volume 2009, Issue 198, Pages 135–148, ISSN (Online) 1613-3668, ISSN (Print) 0165-2516, DOI: 10.1515/IJSL.2009.031, July 2009

Phonology

Vowel and consonant phonemes are represented here with the orthography used in the English-Mutsun dictionary, with the orthographic symbol bolded if it differs from IPA transcription.Okrand, (page 21)

Vowels

* is

open-mid An open-mid vowel (also mid-open vowel, low-mid vowel, mid-low vowel or half-open vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned one thi ...

, whereas is

close-mid A close-mid vowel (also mid-close vowel, high-mid vowel, mid-high vowel or half-close vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned one ...

. * Vowels and consonants are doubled to indicate longer pronunciation (ex: IPA for 'knee' is )

Consonants

Alphabet

References

* * * Okrand, Marc. 1977.
Mutsun Grammar
. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. * Ortiz, Beverly R. 1994. ''Chocheño'' and ''Rumsen'' Narratives: A Comparison. In ''The Ohlone: Past and Present'', pp. 99–164. * * Teixeira, Lauren S. 1997. ''The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area—A Research Guide''. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press.

External links

Mutsun Dictionary

Mutsun Language Talking phrasebook

Indian Canyon - recognized "Indian Country" in HollisterMutsun language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages ---- {{DEFAULTSORT:Mutsun Language Ohlone languages Extinct languages of North America History of San Benito County, California