Ipai language
Yuman language spoken in California, US
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ipai, also spelled ʼIipay and also known as Northern Diegueño, is the Native American language spoken by the Kumeyaay people of central San Diego County, California. Professor Leanne Hinton suggested a conservative estimate of 25 surviving Ipai speakers.
| Ipay | |
|---|---|
| ʼIipay aa | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | San Diego County, California |
| Ethnicity | Kumeyaay |
Native speakers | 6 (2007)[1] |
Yuman–Cochimí
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dih (as part of Diegueño) |
| Glottolog | ipai1240 |
 Ipai is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. | |
Ipai belongs to the Yuman language family and to the Delta–California branch of that family. Ipai and its neighbors to the south, Kumeyaay and Tipai, were often considered to be dialects of a single Diegueño language, but the current consensus among linguists seem to be that at least three distinct languages are present within the dialect chain (e.g., Langdon 1990). Confusingly, Kumeyaay is commonly used as a designation both for the central language in this family and for the Ipai-Kumeyaay-Tipai people as a whole.
Published documentation for the Ipai language includes reference and teaching grammars, a dictionary, and several texts (cf. Mithun 1999:578).
There is no standardized orthography for Ipai.