Karuk language
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Karuk or Karok ( kyh, Araráhih or kyh, Ararahih'uripih) is the traditional language of the
Karuk The Karuk people are an indigenous people of California, and the Karuk Tribe is one of the largest tribes in California. Karuks are also enrolled in two other federally recognized tribes, the Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad ...
people in the region surrounding the
Klamath River The Klamath River (Karuk: ''Ishkêesh'', Klamath: ''Koke'', Yurok: ''Hehlkeek 'We-Roy'') flows through Oregon and northern California in the United States, emptying into the Pacific Ocean. By average discharge, the Klamath is the second larges ...
, in Northwestern California. The name ‘Karuk’ is derived from the Karuk word ''káruk'', meaning “upriver”. Karuk is classified as severely
endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...
by
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
with only around 12 fluent native speakers of the language left. Most members of the Karuk nation now use
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 ide ...
in their everyday lives. Since 1949, there have been efforts to revitalize the language and increase the number of speakers led by linguists such as Dr. William Bright and Susan Gehr, as well as members of the Karuk community.


History and usage

The Karuk language originated around the Klamath River between Seiad Valley and Bluff Creek. Before
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an contact, it is estimated that there may have been up to 1,500 speakers. Linguist
William Bright William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...
documented the Karuk language. When Bright began his studies in 1949, there were "a couple of hundred fluent speakers," but by 2011, there were fewer than a dozen fluent elders. A standardized system for writing the languages was adopted in the 1980s. The region where the Karuk tribe lived remained largely undisturbed until beaver trappers came through the area in 1827. In 1848, gold was discovered in California, and thousands of Europeans came to the Klamath River and its surrounding region to search for gold. The Karuk territory was soon filled with mining towns, manufacturing communities, and farms. The salmon that the tribe relied on for food became less plentiful because of contamination in the water from mining, and many members of the Karuk tribe died from either starvation or new diseases that the Europeans brought with them to the area. Many members of the Karuk tribe were also killed or sold into slavery by the Europeans. Karuk children were sent to boarding schools where they were Americanized and told not to use their native language. These combined factors caused the use of the Karuk language to steadily decline over the years until measures were taken to attempt to revitalize the language.


Classification

Karuk is a
language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...
, sharing few if any similarities with other nearby languages. Historically, the American linguist
Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...
proposed it be classified as part of the Hokan family, although little evidence supports this proposal. As Bright wrote, "The Karok language is not closely or obviously related to any other (in the area), but has been classified as a member of the northern group of Hokan languages, in a subgroup which includes Chimariko and the Shasta languages, spoken in the same general part of California as Karok itself."


Geographic distribution

Karuk is spoken within the range of the original territory where the Karuk people lived prior to
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an contact. The ancestral territory is in Northwestern California in Siskiyou, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties. The language originated around the
Klamath River The Klamath River (Karuk: ''Ishkêesh'', Klamath: ''Koke'', Yurok: ''Hehlkeek 'We-Roy'') flows through Oregon and northern California in the United States, emptying into the Pacific Ocean. By average discharge, the Klamath is the second larges ...
between Seiad Valley and Bluff Creek. Most Karuk speakers now live in the towns of Somes Bar, which is near the Karuk Center of the World (in Karuk, "Katimiin"), Happy Camp ("Athithufvuunupma"), and Orleans ("Panamniik"). The Karuk people originally owned 1.04 million acres of land until it was claimed as public territory in 1905 under the Forest Reserve Act during the Roosevelt administration. In 1887, some members of the Karuk tribe were given small plots of land under the General Allotment Act. In the 1970's, elders from the Karuk tribe bought back two properties in Orleans and Happy Camp and have acquired 1,661 acres of land that the tribe can use for ceremonies, housing, and resource management.


Phonology


Vowels

There are 5 vowel qualities in Karuk /i e a o u/, some of which may also differ in terms of
length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
. Vowel qualities /a i u/ occur as both long and short vowels, while mid vowels /e o/ only occur as long vowels.


Consonants

Karuk has 16 phonemic consonants, a small number compared to the relatively large consonant inventories of most California languages. Karuk also lacks secondary articulation to its consonants such as
glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consona ...
or
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 ...
, also unusual for a Californian language.


Tones

Karuk has a tone system consisting of three tones: high, low, and falling. Falling tones only occur in long vowels.


Syllable structure

When /i u/ occur next to one another in a word, whichever is the first vowel is pronounced as a
glide Glide may refer to: * Gliding flight, to fly without thrust Computing *Glide API, a 3D graphics interface *Glide OS, a web desktop *Glide (software), an instant video messenger *Glide, a molecular docking software by Schrödinger (company), Schr ...
, as in the following examples. ''Note: Syllabification in these examples are from right-to-left.'' The following example is a more rare case in Karuk where the
syllabification Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
is from left-to-right.


Orthography

Karuk consonants have been historically written using several different conventions. A comparison between these conventions follows: In two-consonant sequences hor hare distinguished from the digraphs ⟨sh th⟩ which represent the single phonemes with the use of a dash .


Vowels

Long vowels are represented by doubling the letters: ⟨ii⟩, ⟨aa ⟩ and ⟨uu⟩ are used for /iː/ /aː/ and /uː/. Tones are marked for vowels in Karuk using accent marks. The high and falling tones are represented using the
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...
and
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
, respectively, above the vowels. The low tone is not represented, and tones on long vowels are notated only on the first letter in the digraph.


Grammar

Karuk is a
polysynthetic language In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able t ...
known for its method of arranging old and new information: "... skilled Karuk speakers use separate words to communicate new, salient detail, or to underscore known detail; and they use affixes for background details so that a listener's attention is not diverted."


Morphology

Karuk is similar to many other
American Indian Languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numb ...
in showing "a complex person-marking system, where subject and object are marked in portmanteau
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
es" on its verbs. Depending on the subject and the object the speaker is referring to, there is a prefix for both positive and negative indicatives as well as a prefix for the potential mood. Through his research,
William Bright William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...
found the language lacks words for cardinal directions, but uses suffixes on verbs to describe relevant direction. Many motion verbs have a singular and plural form. Through
morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
, long-form vowels are used when ''a'' is next to ''i'' or ''u''. Karuk uses accents where vowels can sound different in each word, making the language difficult to learn. Although the structure may be similar, Karuk is considered to be very different from its neighboring languages, such as
Yurok The Yurok (Karuk language: Yurúkvaarar / Yuru Kyara - "downriver Indian; i.e. Yurok Indian") are an Indigenous people from along the Klamath River and Pacific coast, whose homelands are located in present-day California stretching from Trinidad ...
.


Verbs

Karuk uses prefixes and suffixes in a way
William Bright William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...
relates to how English words ''snort'', ''sniff'', and ''sneeze'' all start with a ''sn-''. The following are examples of prefixes in Karuk.


Words and phrases

''Note: More translations can be found online in the Dictionary section depicting Dr. Bright's research.''


Revitalization efforts


Work by Dr. William Bright and Susan Gehr

Dr.
William Bright William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...
started studying the Karuk language in 1949 in pursuit of his doctorate in
linguistics 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. Linguis ...
at U.C Berkeley. Bright was met with open arms by tribal elders and was given the Karuk name ''Uhyanapatánvaanich'', or "little word-asker". Around a decade later, Bright published ''The Karok Language'', describing the Karuk language, its grammar, and
syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
. Bright set himself apart from linguists from his time for incorporating elements of the cultural context of Karuk into his descriptions. Bright later worked with Susan Gehr, a tribe member and fellow linguist, on a Karuk
dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
, which was published in 2005. They recorded everyday conversations, songs, stories, and poetry of fluent Karuk speakers to attempt to capture the language and what it meant to those speaking it. Bright spent over fifty years studying, researching, and documenting Karuk, and is the only non-Indian to be inducted as an honorary member of the tribe thanks to his contributions to the community. Bright was buried on Karuk land when he died in 2006.


Revival through education


American Indian Bilingual Teacher Credential Program

In the late 1980s,
Humboldt State University California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt also known as Cal Poly Humboldt, Humboldt or Cal Poly"Cal Poly" may also refer to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California or California State Polytechnic Universi ...
started the "American Indian Bilingual Teacher Credential Program", where they brought in teachers from four local tribes, the
Hupa Hupa (Yurok language term: Huep'oola' / Huep'oolaa = "Hupa people") are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group in northwestern California. Their endonym is Natinixwe, also spelled Natinook-wa, meaning "Peopl ...
,
Yurok The Yurok (Karuk language: Yurúkvaarar / Yuru Kyara - "downriver Indian; i.e. Yurok Indian") are an Indigenous people from along the Klamath River and Pacific coast, whose homelands are located in present-day California stretching from Trinidad ...
,
Karuk The Karuk people are an indigenous people of California, and the Karuk Tribe is one of the largest tribes in California. Karuks are also enrolled in two other federally recognized tribes, the Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad ...
, and
Tolowa The Tolowa people or Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni’ are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethno-linguistic group. Two rancherias (Smith River and Elk Valley) still reside in their traditional territory in northwestern California. Tho ...
. These teachers were bilingual in their tribe's native language as well as
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 ide ...
, and would be employed in local public schools to teach American Indian children. The university developed this initiative to help local American Indian populations either further develop their English for higher education or develop their native language to preserve culture. Bilingual teachers in both Karuk and English would teach at Orleans and Happy Camp Elementary Schools, where children would learn how to live in America while keeping their identity.


Karuk Language Restoration Committee

In 1990, attempts were made to revive the language by the Karuk Language Restoration Committee. The committee, composed of eight volunteers, drafted a 5-year minimum plan in an attempt to preserve the Karuk language and help it regain its standing in the community. The committee was advised by Dr.
William Bright William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...
and tribal member Julian Lang, a dedicated researcher of the language. Their studies suggest that the decline of the language is caused by a combination of a lack of younger fluent speakers, a decline in the number of speakers, not being typically taught at home at young ages, a feeling of disconnect between its use and the contemporary world, and the lack of literacy in the language among tribal members. The committee ultimately created a five-step plan: # Recording and writing down fluent speakers communicating in Karuk. # Training more people to become fluent as a long-term goal. # Raising tribal members' and local communities' aware of the importance of learning the language also as a vehicle of Karuk culture itself. # Reviewing and receiving community feedback regarding the current plan. # Facilitating the community participation in programs that have people practice and speak Karuk.


Master-apprentice program

An immersion method called the master-apprentice program was started in 1992 by Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival to aid in Karuk revitalization efforts. In order to fully immerse a beginning speaker in Karuk, people who are interested in learning the language are paired with a fluent native speaker who they follow throughout the day. During this time spent with the native speaker, learners are only allowed to speak Karuk. The program is intensive, typically lasting 40 hours a week for 3 years. Around 20 groups had successfully gone through the entire program as of the year 2011.


Dictionaries


Karuk Dictionary
Online Karuk dictionary hosted b
UC Berkeley
Linguistics. * William Bright (2005). ''Karuk Dictionary.'' Los Angeles, CA.


References


Further reading

* *


External links


Karuk Language ResourcesKaruk Dictionary and Texts

Traditional Karuk Songs Audio GalleryKaruk language
Overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Karuk language dictionary online from IDS
(select simple or advanced browsing)
Karuk basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical DatabaseLive Your Language Alliance (LYLA)
Working to speak and understand the traditional languages of the
Tolowa The Tolowa people or Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni’ are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethno-linguistic group. Two rancherias (Smith River and Elk Valley) still reside in their traditional territory in northwestern California. Tho ...
,
Karuk The Karuk people are an indigenous people of California, and the Karuk Tribe is one of the largest tribes in California. Karuks are also enrolled in two other federally recognized tribes, the Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad ...
,
Yurok The Yurok (Karuk language: Yurúkvaarar / Yuru Kyara - "downriver Indian; i.e. Yurok Indian") are an Indigenous people from along the Klamath River and Pacific coast, whose homelands are located in present-day California stretching from Trinidad ...
,
Hupa Hupa (Yurok language term: Huep'oola' / Huep'oolaa = "Hupa people") are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group in northwestern California. Their endonym is Natinixwe, also spelled Natinook-wa, meaning "Peopl ...
,
Tsnungwe The Tsnungwe (current Hupa-language orthography, own name: - "Tse:ning-din (Ironside Mountain) People") or ''Tsanunghwa'' are a Native American people indigenous to the modern areas of the lower South Fork Trinity River (), Willow Creek (), ...
,
Wiyot The Wiyot ( Wiyot: Wíyot, Chetco-Tolowa: Wee-’at xee-she or Wee-yan’ Xee-she’, Euchre Creek Tututni: Wii-yat-dv-ne - "Mad River People“, Yurok: Weyet) are an indigenous people of California living near Humboldt Bay, California and a s ...
, Mattole, and
Wailaki The Eel River Athabaskans include the Wailaki, Lassik, Nongatl, and Sinkyone (Sinkine) groups of Native Americans that traditionally live in present-day Mendocino, Trinity, and Humboldt counties on or near the Eel River and Van Duzen River o ...
people.
OLAC resources in and about the Karuk language

Susan Gehr

The Karuk Language Restoration Committee

Julian Lang

Ancestral Territory Map by Susan Gehr

Karok
(
Intercontinental Dictionary Series The Intercontinental Dictionary Series (commonly abbreviated as IDS) is a large database of topical vocabulary lists in various world languages. The general editor of the database is Bernard Comrie of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary An ...
) {{DEFAULTSORT:Karuk Language
Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
Indigenous languages of California Hokan languages Language isolates of North America Polysynthetic languages Endangered language isolates Native American language revitalization