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 ...
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, ...
). 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
*
*
*
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