Klamath (), also Klamath–Modoc () and historically Lutuamian (), is a

Native American language Native may refer to: People * Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Native Americans (disambiguation) In arts and enterta ...

spoken around

Klamath Lake Upper Klamath Lake (sometimes called Klamath Lake) ( Klamath: ?ews, "lake" ) is a large, shallow freshwater lake east of the Cascade Range in south-central Oregon in the United States. The largest body of fresh water by surface area in Oregon, it ...

in what is now southern

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

and northern

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 ...

. It is the traditional language of the Klamath and Modoc peoples, each of whom spoke a dialect of the language. By 1998, only one native speaker remained, and by 2003, this last fluent Klamath speaker who was living in

Chiloquin, Oregon Chiloquin ( ) ( Klamath: mbosaksawaas, "flint place" ) is a city in Klamath County, Oregon, United States. Chiloquin was the pioneer version of a Klamath family name ''Chaloquin'', which was the name of a Klamath chief who was alive at the tim ...

, was 92 years old. As of 2006 there were no fluent native speakers of either the Klamath or Modoc dialects; Golla, Victor. (2011)
California Indian Languages
Berkeley/Los Angeles, California : University of California Press. however, as of 2019, revitalization efforts are underway with the goal of creating new speakers. Klamath is a member of the

Plateau Penutian Plateau Penutian (also Shahapwailutan, Lepitan) is a family of languages spoken in northern California, reaching through central-western Oregon to northern Washington and central-northern Idaho. Family division Plateau Penutian consists of four ...

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

, which is in turn a branch of the proposed

Penutian Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian s ...

language family. Like other proposed Penutian languages, Plateau Penutian languages are rich in

ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...

, much like

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

and Afro-Asiatic languages. Further evidence for this classification includes some consonant correspondences between Klamath and other alleged Penutian languages. For example, the Proto-

Yokuts The Yokuts (previously known as MariposasPowell, 1891:90–91.) are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. ''Yokuts ...

retroflexes correspond to Klamath , and the Proto-Yokuts dentals correspond to the Klamath alveolars .

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Obstruents in Klamath, except for , and , all come in triplets of

unaspirated In linguistics, a tenuis consonant ( or ) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized. In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish ''p, t, ...

, aspirated, and

ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some ...

sounds. Sonorant triplets are

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

, voiceless, and "laryngealized" sounds. Most consonants can be geminated. The fricative is an exception, and there is evidence suggesting this is a consequence of a recent sound change.

Albert Samuel Gatschet Albert Samuel Gatschet (October 3, 1832, Beatenberg, Canton of Bern – March 16, 1907, Washington, D.C.) was a Swiss-American ethnologist who trained as a linguist in the universities of Bern and Berlin. He later moved to the United States and s ...

recorded geminated in the late 19th century, but this sound was consistently recorded as degeminated by

M. A. R. Barker Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker (born Phillip Barker, November 3, 1929 – March 16, 2012) was an American linguist who was professor of Urdu and South Asian Studies and created one of the first roleplaying games, ''Empire of the Petal Throne' ...

in the 1960s. Sometime after Gatschet recorded the language and before Barker did the same, may have degeminated into .

Syntax

Klamath word order is conditioned by pragmatics. There is no clearly defined verb phrase or noun phrase. Alignment is nominative–accusative, with nominal case marking also distinguishing adjectives from nouns. Many verbs obligatorily classify an absolutive case. There are directive and applicative constructions. Rude, 1988.

Notes

References

* Barker, M. A. R. (1963a). ''Klamath Texts''. University of California Publications in Linguistics, volume 30. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. * ———. (1963b).
Klamath Dictionary
'. University of California Publications in Linguistics 31. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. * ———. (1964). ''Klamath Grammar''. University of California Publications in Linguistics 32. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. * Barker, Philip. (1959). The Klamath language. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley * Blevins, Juliette. (1993). Klamath Laryngeal Phonology. The University of Chicago Press * Blevins, J. (2004, July)
Klamath sibilant degemination: Implications of a recent sound change.
'' IJAL'', ''70'', 279–289. * Chen, D. W. (1998, April 5). Blackboard: Lost languages;

Kuskokwim The Kuskokwim River or Kusko River (Yup'ik: ''Kusquqvak''; Deg Xinag: ''Digenegh''; Upper Kuskokwim: ''Dichinanek' ''; russian: Кускоквим (''Kuskokvim'')) is a river, long, in Southwest Alaska in the United States. It is the ninth la ...

not spoken here. ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. * * Maudlin, W. S. (1998, April 17)
Yale linguists part of effort to save dying languages
''

The Yale Herald ''The Yale Herald'' is a newspaper run by undergraduate students at Yale University since 1986. A weekly, the paper aims to provide in-depth, investigative reporting, and includes personal essays, interviews, opinion pieces, culture articles, revi ...

''. Retrieved May 6, 2008 * Rude, Noel (1987). Some Sahaptian-Klamath grammatical correspondences. ''Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics'', 12:67-83. * Rude, Noel (1988)
Semantic and pragmatic objects in Klamath.
In ''In Honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics'', ed. by William Shipley, pp. 651–73. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Rude, Noel (1991). Verbs to promotional suffixes in Sahaptian and Klamath. In ''Approaches to Grammaticalization'', ed. by Elizabeth C. Traugott and Bernd Heine. ''Typological Studies in Language'' 19:185-199. New York and Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Online texts

* Includes Klamath language plant names. * * *

External links

The Klamath Tribes Language Project

native-languages.org
Modoc language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Klamath language
California Language Archive
OLAC resources in and about the Klamath-Modoc language

{{DEFAULTSORT:Klamath language Klamath Modoc tribe Plateau Penutian languages Indigenous languages of the North American Plateau Indigenous languages of California Indigenous languages of Oregon Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 2000s Language isolates of North America 2003 disestablishments in the United States