Coast Miwok was one of the

Miwok The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, who traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family. The word ...

languages spoken in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, from

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water f ...

Bodega Bay Bodega Bay ( es, Bahía Bodega) is a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California in the United States. It is approximately across and is located approximately northwest of San Francisco and west of Santa Ros ...

. The Marin and Bodega varieties may have been separate languages. All of the population has shifted to

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

Grammar

According to Catherine A. Callaghan's ''Bodega Miwok Dictionary'', nouns have the following

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...

s, expressed with suffixes: present subjective,

possessive A possessive or ktetic form ( abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ow ...

allative In grammar, the allative case (; abbreviated ; from Latin ''allāt-'', ''afferre'' "to bring to") is a type of locative grammatical case. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages that do not make finer ...

locative In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

, and

comitative In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", l ...

. Sentences are most commonly subject-verb-object, but Callaghan says that "syntax is relatively free."

Phonology

The following is the Bodega dialect: Phonemes in parentheses are introduced from Spanish loan words. Allophones of introduced sounds, /b ɡ/ include /β ɣ/.

References

* Callaghan, Catherine A. 1970. ''Bodega Miwok Dictionary''. Berkeley: University of California Press. * Coast Miwok Indians. "''Rodriguez-Nieto Guide" Sound Recordings (California Indian Library Collections), LA006''. Berkeley: California Indian Library Collections, 1993. "''Sound recordings reproduced from the Language Archive sound recordings at the Language Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley''". * Keeling, Richard. "''Ethnographic Field Recordings at Lowie Museum of Anthropology''," 1985. Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. v. 2. North-Central California: Pomo, Wintun, Nomlaki, Patwin, Coast Miwok, and Lake Miwok Indians

External links

Coast Miwok
at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Coast Miwok, California Language ArchiveOLAC resources in and about the Coast Miwok languageCoast (Bodega) Miwok basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Miwok Utian languages Extinct languages of North America History of the San Francisco Bay Area {{na-lang-stub