The Ohlone languages, also known as Costanoan, are a small family of

indigenous languages An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples. This language is from a linguistically distinct community that originated in the area. Indigenous languages are not neces ...

spoken by the

Ohlone The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the ...

people. The

pre-contact In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

distribution of these languages ranged from the southern

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

to northern

Monterey County Monterey County ( ), officially the County of Monterey, is a county located on the Pacific coast in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, its population was 439,035. The county's largest city and county seat is Salinas. Montere ...

. Along with the

Miwok languages The Miwok or Miwokan languages (; Miwok: ), also known as ''Moquelumnan'' or ''Miwuk'', are a group of endangered languages spoken in central California by the Miwok peoples, ranging from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada. There are seven Miwok ...

, they are members of the Utian language family. The most recent work suggests that Ohlone, Miwok, and

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 ...

are branches of a

Yok-Utian Yok-Utian is a proposed language family of California. It consists of the Yokuts language and the Utian language family. While connections between Yokuts and Utian languages were noticed through attempts to reconstruct their proto-languages in 1 ...

language family.

Languages

Ohlone comprises eight attested varieties: Awaswas,

Chalon Chalon may refer to: Culture * Chalon people, a Native American tribe of California * Chalon language, an Ohlone language spoken by the Chalon people Places * Chalon, Isère, formerly Châlons, in France's Isère ''département'' * Le Chalon, in ...

, Chochenyo (also spelt as Chocheño), Karkin,

Mutsun Mutsun (also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan) is a Utian language spoken in Northern California. It was the primary language of a division of the Ohlone people living in the Mission San Juan Bautista area. The Tamien Nation and band is cu ...

Ramaytush The Ramaytush or Rammay-tuš people are a linguistic subdivision of the Ohlone people of Northern California. The term Ramaytush was first applied to them in the 1970s, but the modern Ohlone people of the peninsula have claimed it as their ethn ...

, Rumsen, and

Tamyen The Tamien people (also spelled as ''Tamyen'', ''Thamien'') are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone (Costanoan) people groups of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. The Tamien traditionally lived throughout the Santa ...

. Overall, divergence among these languages seems to have been roughly equivalent to that among the languages of the

Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...

sub-family of Indo-European languages. Neighboring groups seem to have been able to understand and speak to each other. The number and geographic distribution of Ohlone language divisions partially mirrors the distribution of Franciscan missions in their original lands. While the known languages are, in most cases, quite distinct, intermediate dialects may have been lost as local groups gathered at the missions. A newly discovered text from

Mission Santa Clara Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion *Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity *Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...

provides evidence that Chochenyo of the

East Bay The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties ...

area and Tamyen of the

Santa Clara Valley The Santa Clara Valley is a geologic trough in Northern California that extends 90 miles (145 km) south–southeast from San Francisco to Hollister. The longitudinal valley is bordered on the west by the Santa Cruz Mountains and on the east ...

were closely related dialects of a single San Francisco Bay Ohlone language. The last native speakers of Ohlone languages died by the 1950s. However, Chochenyo, Mutsun, and Rumsen are now in a state of revival (relearned from saved records). The classification below is based primarily on Callaghan (2001). Other classifications list Northern Costanoan, Southern Costanoan, and Karkin as single languages, with the following subgroups of each considered as dialects: * Karkin (also known as Carquin) * Northern Costanoan ** San Francisco Bay Costanoan ***

(also known as Tamien, Santa Clara Costanoan) *** Chochenyo (also known as Chocheño, Chocheno, East Bay Costanoan) ***

(also known as San Francisco Costanoan) ** Awaswas (also known as Santa Cruz Costanoan) – There may have been more than one Costanoan language spoken within the proposed Awaswas area, as the small amount of linguistic material attributed to Mission Santa Cruz Costanoans is highly variable. **

(also known as Cholon, Soledad) – Chalon may be a transitional language between Northern and Southern Costanoan. * Southern Costanoan **

(also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan) ** Rumsen (also known as Rumsien, San Carlos, Carmel) Muwekma-Tah-Ruk closeup

More recently, Callaghan (2014) groups Awaswas together with

as part of a ''South Central Costanoan'' subgroup with the Southern Costanoan branch.

Dialect or language debate

Regarding the eight Ohlone branches, sources differ on if they were eight language

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

s, or eight separate

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 ...

s. Richard Levy, himself a linguist, contradicted himself on this point: First he said "Costanoans themselves were a set of tribelets mall tribeswho spoke a common language... distinguished from one another by slight differences in dialect"; however after saying that, he concluded: "The eight branches of the Costanoan family were separate languages (not dialects) as different from one another as Spanish is from French" (Levy, 1978:485, "Language and Territory"). Randall Milliken (1995:24–26) stated in 1995 that there were eight dialects, citing missionary-linguist

Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta (1780–1842) was a Spanish Franciscan missionary and linguist notable for his work on native languages. Arroyo de la Cuesta was born in Cubo de Bureba, Burgos, Spain in 1780. He arrived in the Spanish territory of A ...

to the effect that the idioms seemed distinct as one traveled from mission to mission, but actually formed a dialect chain from one neighboring local tribe to another. Catherine Callaghan (1997, 2001), a linguist who steeped herself in the primary documents, offered evidence that the Costanoan languages were distinct, with only Ramaytush, Tamyen, and Chochenyo possibly being dialects of a single language. Milliken (2008:6), himself an ethnohistorian and not a linguist, shifted his position in 2008 to follow Callaghan, referring to separate Costanoan languages rather than dialects.

Native placenames

The Ohlone native people belonged to one or more tribes, bands or villages, and to one or more of the eight linguistic group regions (as assigned by

ethnolinguist Ethnolinguistics (sometimes called cultural linguistics) is an area of anthropological linguistics that studies the relationship between a language and the nonlinguistic cultural behavior of the people who speak that language. __NOTOC__ Example ...

s). Native names listed in the mission records were, in some cases, clearly principal village names, in others the name assigned to the region of a "multifamily landholding group" (per Milliken). Although many native names have been written in historical records, the exact spelling and pronunciations were not entirely standardized in modern English. Ethnohistorians have resorted to approximating their indigenous regional boundaries as well. (The word that Kroeber coined to designate California tribes, bands and villages, ''

tribelet Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...

'', has been published in many records but is advisably offensive and incorrect, per the Ohlone people.) Many of the known tribal and village names were recorded in the California mission records of

baptism Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...

marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...

, and death. Some names have come from Spanish and Mexican settlers, some from early Anglo-European travelers, and some from the memories of Native American

informants An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...

. Speakers were natives still alive who could remember their group's native language and details. Some of the former tribe and village names were gleaned from the land maps (" diseños de terreno") submitted by grantees in applying for Spanish and Mexican land grants or designs (" diseños") that were drawn up in

Alta California Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...

prior to the

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...

. In this regard, large amounts of untranslated material is available for research in the records of Clinton H. Merriam housed at the Bancroft Library, and more material continues to be published by local historical societies and associations.

Spelling and pronunciation

Many of the original sounds were first heard and copied down by Spanish missionaries using Spanish as a reference language, subject to human error, later translated into English and Anglicized over time. Spelling errors crept in as different missionaries kept separate records over a long period of time, under various administrators. Ethnohistorians Kroeber, Merriam, and others interviewed Ohlone speakers and were able to define some pronunciations on word lists. Ethnolinguists have used this to some advantage to create phonetic tables giving some semblance of languages, notably the ''Selected Costanoan Words by Merriam''.

Native words

A partial table of words comes from ''Indian Names for Plants and Animals Among California and other Western North American Tribes'' by Clinton Merriam. This published list covers 400 Ohlone words from interviews of native speakers. The Ohlone words listed are by "phonetic English" pronunciations.Phonetic tables, Merriam, 1979. See also "C. Hart Merriam" biography and endorsement, Teixeira, 1997:33–34.

References

Bibliography

* Levy, Richard. (1978). ''Costanoan'', in ''Handbook of North American Indians'', Vol. 8 (California). William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. / 0160045754, pages 485–495. * * Milliken, Randall. (1995). ''A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769–1910.'' Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication. . * Milliken, Randall. (2008). ''Native Americans at Mission San Jose''. Banning, CA: Malki-Ballena Press. . * Teixeira, Lauren. (1997). ''The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area, A Research Guide''. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication. .

External links

Language:
Chochenyo revitalization – language at UCB "News" 2004

Chochenyo revitalization – language at UCB "Faith in Words" 2004

Ohlone dictionary

''Grammar of Mutsun'' by Arroyo de la Cuesta, Felipe
(1842) (in Spanish)
Tamyen language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Rumsen language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Ramaytush language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Chalon language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages {{DEFAULTSORT:Ohlone Languages Extinct languages of North America