Tillamook is an

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 ...

Salishan The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by ag ...

language, formerly spoken by the

Tillamook people The Tillamook are a Native American tribe from coastal Oregon of the Salish linguistic group. The name "Tillamook" is a Chinook language term meaning "people of he villageNekelim (or Nehalem)", sometimes it is given as a Coast Salish term, meani ...

in northwestern

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The last fluent speaker was Minnie Scovell who died in 1972. In an effort to prevent the language from being lost, a group of researchers from the

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

interviewed the few remaining Tillamook-speakers and created a 120-page dictionary.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Internal rounding

The so-called "rounded" consonants (traditionally marked with the diacritic , but here indicated with ), including rounded vowels and (), are not actually

labialized Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...

. The acoustic effect of labialization is created entirely inside the mouth by cupping the tongue (

sulcalization Sulcalization (from la, sulcus 'groove'), in phonetics, is the pronunciation of a sound, typically a sibilant consonant, such as English and , with a deep ''groove'' running along the back of the tongue that focuses the airstream on the teeth, p ...

). Uvulars with this distinctive internal rounding have "a kind of timbre" while "rounded" front velars have coloring. These contrast and oppose otherwise very similar segments having or coloring—the "unrounded" consonants. is also formed with this internal rounding instead of true

labialization Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...

, making it akin to . So are vowel sounds formerly written as or , which are best characterized as the diphthong with increasing internal rounding.Thompson & Thompson (1966), p. 316

Notes

Bibliography

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External links

University of Oregon: The Tillamook
*
OLAC resources in and about the Tillamook language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tillamook Language Coast Salish languages Indigenous languages of Oregon Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 1970s 1970s disestablishments in Oregon