Kumeyaay language
Yuman language spoken in California and Mexico
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kumeyaay (Kumiai), more precisely known as Central Diegueño or Campo, is the Native American language spoken by the Kumeyaay people of southern San Diego and Imperial counties in California.
(assuming all Diegeño in Mexico are Tiipai)
| Kumeyaay | |
|---|---|
| Southern Diegueño | |
| Native to | United States, Mexico |
| Region | California, Baja California |
| Ethnicity | Kumeyaay |
Native speakers | 40–50 Kumeyaay in the United States (2020)[1] (assuming all Diegeño in Mexico are Tiipai) |
Yuman
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dih (as part of Diegueño) |
| Glottolog | kumi1248 Tipai |
| ELP | Kumeyaay |
Hinton in 1994 suggested a conservative estimate of 50 native speakers of Kumeyaay.[2]
Kumeyaay belongs to the Yuman language family and to the Delta–California branch of that family. Kumeyaay and its neighbors, ʼIipay to the north and Tiipay to the south, were often considered to be dialects of a single Diegueño language, but the 1990 consensus among linguists seems to be that at least three distinct languages are present within the dialect chain.[3]
Confusingly, Kumeyaay is commonly used as a designation both for the central language of this family and for the ʼIipay-Tiipay-Kumeyaay people as a whole. Tiipay is also commonly used as a collective designation for speakers of both Kumeyaay and Tiipay proper.
Documentation
In 1999, published documentation for the Kumeyaay language appeared to be limited to a few texts.[4] In 2019, Margaret Field (along with other translators and native speakers) published a trilingual book of stories and oral histories from Baja California Tiipay communities of Nejí and La Huerta.[5]
Video and audio recordings of stories, conversation, and wordlists in the Tiipay variants spoken in Nejí and La Huerta have been uploaded to the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA).[6] Some of these have been transcribed and are available to download on the Endangered Languages Archive[7] hosted by the Endangered Languages Documentation Program (ELDP) at the University of London.
As of April 2023, classes are available through Kumeyaay Community College paired with Cuyamaca Community College as well as San Diego State University.[8] There is also a Kumeyaay language immersion program.[9]
Phonology
Consonants
Alveolar sounds /t, s, n, r/ can also be heard as post-alveolar [t̠, s̠, n̠, r̠].[10]
Vowels
Vowel length may also be distributed.
