The Serrano language (Serrano: ''Maarrênga'twich'') is a language in the Serran branch of the

Uto-Aztecan Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...

family spoken by the Serrano people of

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

. The language is closely related to

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...

Tataviam The Tataviam (Kitanemuk: ''people on the south slope'') are a Native American group in Southern California. The ancestral land of the Tataviam people includes northwest present-day Los Angeles County and southern Ventura County, primarily in th ...

Kitanemuk The Kitanemuk are an indigenous people of California. They traditionally lived in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley area of the western Mojave Desert of southern California, United States. Today some Kitanemuk people are enrolled in ...

and

Vanyume The Vanyume or Desert Serrano are an Indigenous people of Southern California. Traditional Vanyume territory extended along the Mojave River from the Eastern Mojave Desert to present day Victorville and may have included portions of southern ...

. Serrano has free word order with the only rule being that verbs usually come last.

Speakers

According to

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

, there was 1 speaker in 1994. The last fully fluent speaker was Dorothy Ramon, who died in 2002. During the last years of Dorothy Ramon's life, she worked with linguist Eric Elliot. Together they wrote a book named ''Wayta' Yawa' (Always Believe)''. This book was written in Serrano and in English which talks about the Serrano culture and the life of Dorothy Ramon, which in turned saved the Serrano language from complete extinction. After Dorothy Ramon's death, the language is now considered dormant, as revitalization efforts have allowed the language to survive in some form. Traditionally referring to themselves as Maarrênga'yam meaning "people of Maarra" (Maarra' is considered to be modern day Twentynine Palms) or Yuhaviatam meaning "people of the pines," the Serrano people originally occupied the area near the

Mojave River The Mojave River is an intermittent river in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains and the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Most of its flow is underground, while its surface channels remain dry most of the time, ...

and

San Bernardino San Bernardino (; Spanish language, Spanish for Bernardino of Siena, "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a ...

Mountains of Southern California. In 1891 the United States established the San Manuel Reservation for the Serrano people where many of its last speakers lived. In 1967, Researcher Kenneth Cushman Hill noted that about 6 people still spoke the now dormant language.Hill, Kenneth Cushman. "A Grammar of the Serrano Language". ''University of California''. 1967. As of today, the nephew of Dorothy Ramon is seen as the last person who is able to speak the language at a fluent level.

Language revitalization

The language was at a time considered to be extinct but there are attempts at reviving it. Both at the

San Manuel Band of Mission Indians The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians is a federally recognized tribe of Serrano people in San Bernardino County, California.

, and

Morongo Band of Mission Indians The Morongo Band of Mission Indians is a federally recognized tribe in California, United States. The main tribal groups are Cahuilla and Serrano. Tribal members also include Cupeño, Luiseño, and Chemehuevi Indians. Although many tribes in C ...

reservations there are efforts now underway to teach the language and the history and culture of the Serrano people. Language teacher Pauline Murillo helped develop an interactive CD ROM for learning Serrano. As of 2013, apps and games have been developed, and the San Manuel Band's Serrano Language Revitalization Project (SLRP) seeks to develop further multimedia resources for language learners. In May 2013,

Cal State San Bernardino California State University, San Bernardino (Cal State San Bernardino or CSUSB) is a public research university in San Bernardino, California. Founded in 1965, it is one of the 23 general campuses of the California State University system. The m ...

announced it would offer Serrano language classes to its students. The Limu project offers online courses in Maarrênga' (Morongo Band "Serrano" dialect) and Yuhaviat (San Manuel Band "Serrano" dialect). The Serrano language was traditionally a spoken language; an alphabet was not used until the 1990s. A new alphabet, with 47 letters, including the

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

, was developed starting in 2005. Th
Endangered Languages Project
lists Serrano as in the "Awakening" stage, meaning that the language has lost its native and fluent speakers and can be considered "extinct" but has revitalization projects underway to preserve knowledge of the language and the Serrano people. University of California, Los Angeles provides a recording of a Serrano speaker reading a word list here. Serrano is currently in the process of being added to Google Translate.

Morphology

Serrano is an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...

language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

s strung together. In 1967, the language of Serrano was charted as having 33 consonants and 9 vowels in its phonetic form.

Phonology

The charts of consonants and vowels below are used in the Serrano language:

Consonants

Vowels

Vowels /ɨ/, /a/, /o/, can be rhoticized as /ɨ˞/, /a˞/, /o˞/.

References

* *Pritzker, Barry. "A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples. ''Oxford University Press''. 2000. *Hill, Kenneth Cushman. "A Grammar of the Serrano Language". ''University of California, Los Angeles''. 1967.

External links

The Limu Project
active language revitalization *
Dorothy Ramón Learning Center
Banning, California
San Manuel Band of Mission IndiansMorongo Band of Mission IndiansSerrano language
overview at the

Survey of California and Other Indian Languages The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...

OLAC resources in and about the Serrano language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Serrano, Language Serrano people

Takic The Takic languages are a putative group of Uto-Aztecan languages historically spoken by a number of Indigenous peoples of California, Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Takic is grouped with the Tübatulabal language, Tubatulabal, Hopi la ...

Takic languages Native American language revitalization