LINGUISTIquips

This is an electronic copy of a paper I’ve just completed for a class in Multilingualism at the University of California, Davis, April 28, 2008.

“We’re all getting old and when we go our language goes with us.”
— Margaret Valdez, native Yokuts speaker (qtd. in Larsen, 2004)

At one time, there were over 100 native languages spoken within the borders of what is now California (Hotz, 2000). At the time of this writing, 50 of the original 100 languages are extinct; most of the remaining languages have very few speakers left (2000).

I will look primarily at three native languages: Wiyot, Western Mono and Yurok. These languages are typical of native languages throughout the state, but each is in a slightly different situation. I will also examine some general conditions shared by all native languages in California, and a few examples from languages other than the aforementioned three, in less detail.

United States Policies towards Native American Languages

Even with such high numbers of native languages with fewer than 50 speakers (Ethnologue, 2008), it wasn’t until 1990 that the United States passed legislation to try and protect them. The Native American Languages Act (1990) reads “it is the policy of the United States to […] preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages,” officially recognizing the rights of native americans to preserve their languages (§ 104).

What this legislation actually does, however, is more of a mystery. Government and medical services, for example, are offered primarily in English and a handful of minority languages, which are more widely spoken than native american languages. In fact, I could not find a single example of a government or medical service offered in any native language in California.

Such legislation does little without popular support. Although native american culture has gained a certain niche in terms of marketability of goods and artistic pieces, the popular focus on native languages is nearly nonexistent.

The State of Native Languages in California

All of the indigenous languages I found spoken natively in California could be categorized under Stage 8 of Joshua Fishman’s Eight Stage Model (Perhaps some exceptional cases such as Yurok could be considered Stage 7, for reasons I will illustrate later). As such, most speakers of these languages (especially native speakers) are quite old, and the languages are not being passed on to younger speakers or children (Pitkin, 1984). Indeed, the remaining native languages of California seem doomed to suffer the same fate as their predecessors: a slow death.

One such language is Wintu. Wintu was spoken in the central valley of California, around the area of what is now Sacramento, and up through modern Shasta County (Pitkin, 1984). Like many native languages in the region, there was an effort by linguists to record Wintu before it became too late to do so. In 1984, Harvey Pitkin authored a comprehensive grammar of Wintu, comprised of nearly a half-century of work by himself and others. The writing of Pitkin’s “Wintu Grammar” relied heavily upon contact with native speakers (1984).

The work makes specific reference to three such speakers: Carrie B. Dixon, Joe Charles, and Ellen Silverthorn (1984). The latter of the three was considered the last of the monolingual speakers of Wintu at the time the grammar was released, when she was over 80 years old (1984).

Pitkin reports 1910 census data in his grammar, citing “399 Wintu speakers, 4 of whom were living in Nevada” (1984, p. 1). However, by the time the grammar was written, Wintu was “spoken only by several older people in Shasta and Trinity counties in northern California” (1984, p. 1).

This type of “slow death” appears to be typical of native American languages in the state and nationally. Even languages that were not recorded by linguists presumably suffered a similar fate.

Native American Language Shift

When looking at language shift, one constantly is confronted with numerous factors that dictate how patterns will develop in a particular language. Many languages encounter several particularly detrimental factors.

One is that of language dominance. In North America, all native languages can be easily considered to be in the extreme minority (Ethnologue, 2008). When compared with English, speakership of these native tongues appears almost non-existent, even for the best-off of indigenous languages (2008). This low speakership can be attributed to the lack of government support or the lack of education in that language.

Native languages seem to have an added difficulty in this regard. No single language before English could have been considered a dominant tongue. Each language was spoken by many (relatively isolated) groups of individuals, most of whom were monolingual. Under these circumstances, even native languages with relatively large amounts of speakers, such as Navajo (which was not spoken natively in California), find themselves in situations of declining native speakership. This decline in speakership, in turn, fuels the further loss of any remaining services in a given language, illustrating a cycle of decline typical of many native tongues.

With government and medical services available solely in languages more dominant than indigenous tongues, there are but a few areas in which native languages could theoretically be spoken:

• At work: it is conceivably possible for native languages to be spoken in workplace environments among several speakers. However, with today’s quickly dwindling populations of native speakers of native languages in California, such a situation is almost surely nonexistent.

• At home: as with many other heritage languages, native american languages can be spoken at home between bilingual children (who speak a native language and the dominant language) and monolingual parents (who speak only the native language). Clearly, however, this type of situation, while possible, no longer exists for most if not all native american languages. Most native languages spoken in California have fewer than a hundred speakers, and some fewer than ten (Ethnologue, 2008).

• In cultural settings: native languages not used at home or at work could still be used in cultural settings. For example, it is conceivable that in certain ceremonies the native language would be seen as essential to the form of the ceremony itself.

Such ceremonial applications of a given tongue, however, can prove to be deadly if that language is already moribund. If ceremony and ritual are the only places where a native language is spoken, that language can easily lose its productivity; that is, bilingual speakers will begin to rely on memorized phrases rather than grammar and syntax, and the usefulness of the language is diminished as speakers forget linguistic intricacies through a lack of use.

Some native american groups do attempt to save their languages from extinction. There is an important distinction here between language revival and language revitalization. Language revival is the reintroduction of an extinct tongue with no living native speakers, while language revitalization is an attempt to save a moribund language (Redish 2001).

Use of Mono in California

Mono (also known as Monachi) is a language with less than 50 native speakers remaining in east central California (Hinton, 1994, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008). The language is fairly typical of a lot of native american tongues with declining speakership; some very informal classes are being organized in an attempt to teach children Mono, but there is little ability for large-scale language revitalization (Kroskrity, 2002). There is interest in the Mono ethnic community in learning the language, however, a fact which perhaps gives native speakers hope of saving their tongue.

The decline of Mono follows a common pattern of native american languages, and it is chronicled in an article by Paul Kroskrity: “Several of the oldest members of the community reported that their parents refused to teach them their ancestral language […] by describing their children as kumasa-tɨka, or bread-eaters (2002, p. 174).” Their parents had associated Mono with hunter-gatherer activities, and therefore saw no need to teach it to individuals who would buy things from stores: “bread-eaters (2002).”

Much of this sentiment dates back perhaps from 1863 to the early twentieth century, when Mono was heavily stigmatized by mandatory education of children, in schools that did not allow the use of any native language (2002). This type of situation is described by Kroskrity as “ethnocide (2002, p. 176).”

The few native Mono speakers remaining, clearly, are bilingual in Mono and English. One speaker recalls of her youth: “I was still a girl when my mother stopped speaking Mono in our home. When I asked her why, she said, ‘you young people will not live as we did. […] The new man’s language is what you need (2002, p. 177).’”

Use of Wiyot in California

Malcolm Margolin writes of one example in which a native tongue is primarily used in ceremony by a social group in California; this group is the Wiyot (the original inhabitants of the Humbolt Bay area), who spoke a language by the same name (2000). The Wiyot have tried to ensure that their culture does not bleed dry in the face of dwindling numbers and limited public awareness, and admittedly, they “have moved decisively away from the edge of cultural and political oblivion (2000).” Wiyot is classified as extinct (Ethnologue, 2008), but amazingly, it is beginning to be spoken again in northwestern California. The Wiyot language is used for “official votes of yes or no” of the Tribal Council (the only political event that the tribe hosts) (Margolin, 2000). Children in the Wiyot community are being taught the language (by individuals who learned it from written grammars), but only as a second language, as there are still no reported native speakers of Wiyot (the last native speaker, Della Prince, died in 1962) (2000).

The Wiyot are attempting a revival of their language on the Table Bluff reservation near Loleta, California. Wiyot is being taught to children on this reservation, but the tribe certainly has a long trek ahead if they are to truly bring back a language that died in 1962, for several reasons.

Firstly, the language being taught now on Table Bluff could be vastly different from the Wiyot tongue spoken by Della Prince. Presumably, the tribe is using written grammars as their primary reference for the language. While the comprehensiveness of these grammars is clearly abundant (if there is enough there to teach), recreating nuances in pronunciation from a written source will almost certainly prove problematic. But then again, if there aren’t any native speakers to tell anyone that they’re doing it wrong, the problem may be only a superficial one.

Secondly, the children being taught Wiyot are almost certainly being taught it as a second language only. There will be no monolingual speakers of Wiyot, for the simple reason that everyone in the tribe (including, presumably, the teachers of Wiyot) are English speakers. Therefore, Wiyot will be used as a sort of “pleasure” language, where speaking it is done solely by choice and is not necessary for one’s survival.

Finally, there will continue to be a complete lack of government and medical services in Wiyot. This will, almost certainly, always be the case, as even with a successful language revival many years from now, the language will not be spoken by a population greater than that of Table Bluff reservation, which is approximately 350 individuals (Margolin 2000), only 100 individuals short of the entire estimated Wiyot ethnic population of 450 (Yamamoto, 2000, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008).

Use of Yurok in California

With such a widespread distribution of declining language use and speakership, it’s difficult to fathom why there are not a large number of language revitalization projects in existence. Language death (or impending death) is a problem common to all of the California indigenous languages I encountered, and yet, attempts at language revitalization in California are very much few and far between.

One such revitalization project that is fairly impressive, however, is that of Yurok. The Yurok people traditionally inhabited the area around the northern coast of modern California. Their language has approximately 12 native speakers (Goddard, 2002, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008).

A visit to the Yurok Tribe Language Program website proves very impressive. Firstly, the tribe has founded a Yurok Language Teacher Institute, and begun training teachers (Yurok, 2008). The material being used by the tribe is from the University of Califoria, Berkeley, Yurok Language Project, which is an archive of “new and older work on Yurok together […], incorporating material from as early as 1850 to the present day (2005).” Much like Wiyot, the Yurok language is being taught to children as a second language, only with the assistance of a few native speakers (Yurok, 2008).

What makes this particular project truly interesting is the fact that the tribe is not limiting its revitalization project to a single population or reservation of individuals. Instead, they are working with Southern Oregon University’s ACORNS language project, which is an online language learning resource for indigenous languages of southern Oregon and northern California (Southern Oregon 2008). ACORNS stands for the Acquisition of Restored Native Speech, and it offers software on all computer platforms for native language learning, complete with “Picture and Sound lessons, Multiple Choice lessons, Hear and Respond lessons, and Dictionaries (2008).”

In addition, the Yurok Language Project allows free access to a number of Yurok learning materials, including a full book of Conversational Yurok (written by native speaker Georgiana Trull) and audio downloads of native pronunciations (UC Berkeley, 2005). I find the entire repository (UC Berkeley’s archives, the Yurok tribe’s archive and the ACORNS archive) to be very extensive and impressive for a revitalization project of a language with only 12 native speakers remaining (Goddard, 2002, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008).

Prospects for Some Native Languages of California

As I illustrated, many native american languages of California have quickly declining speakerships. This is due, mostly, to the absolute domination of English and other non-native languages in the state among government and federal services, and very small tribal populations, coming from over a century of public prejudice and federal mishandling.

It is difficult to suggest a good prognosis for most of the native languages in the state. In fact, based on the information I found, it’s almost certain that the vast majority of native languages extant today will be extinct within the next 50 years.

A language like Wiyot, with a dedicated tribe attempting revival, probably has the brightest prospects, but only for the fact that Wiyot is already dead. It’s been 40 years since it’s had a native speaker, and so even a growing (but still small) population of learner speakers could be considered an improvement. Realistically, starting from extinct means that things can’t get any worse.

Yurok, on the other hand, which (to me) has the most impressive revitalization project in the state, has prospects little better than those of most other languages. Even with increasing speakership, the affected population is still vastly small for most government and medical services to consider offering programs in Yurok. Certainly, the possibility exists for there to be a surge in public interest in the language, and therefore a rise in the count of non-ethnic speakers, which could, in theory, raise speakership further than tribal populations. However, the situation produced by such a program is similar to a hypothetical revival of Latin; people might speak it, but only for pleasure. The road to public services in Yurok is long, and perhaps far longer than such a program can muster, no matter how impressive said program may be.

Mono speakers in California, who report organizing informal language classes, seem to be between the Wiyot and Yurok situations. These speakers have clearly less resources, and therefore even less of a revitalization chance than the Yurok tribe. Certainly, all of this sounds a bit pessimistic, but unfortunately, when it comes to native american language maintenance and revival, there isn’t much room for optimism.

Works Cited

Hotz, Robert Lee. (2000). The Impassioned Fight to Save Dying Languages. [Online]. Available http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/article004.html [21 April 2008].

Kroskrity, Paul V. (2002). Language Renewal and the Technologies of Literacy and Postliteracy. Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas. London, University of California Press.

Larsen, Nicola. (2004). Language Revival. [Online]. Available http://www.tuleriver.org/heritage/language_revival.html (20 April 2008).

Margolin, Malcolm. (2000). The Wiyot: Completing the Circle. [Online]. Available http://ecologycenter.org/terrain/article.php?id=13136 (24 April 2008).

National American Languages Act of 1990 § 104, 101 U.S.C. P.L. 101-477 (1990).

Pitkin, Harvey. (1984). Wintu Grammar. London, University of California Press.

Raposa, Tim S. (2006). Fishman’s GIDS Scale. [Online]. Available http://web.scc.losrios.edu/raposat/stories/storyReader$58 (22 April 2008).

Redish, Laura. (2001). Native Languages of the Americas: Endangered Language Revitalization and Revival. [Online]. Available http://www.native-languages.org/revive.htm [22 April 2008].

SIL International. (2008). Ethnologue, Web Version. [Online]. Available http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp (22 April 2008).

Southern Oregon University. (2008). Acorns Language Restoration Project. [Online]. Available http://cs.sou.edu/%7Eharveyd/acorns/ (24 April 2008).

University of California, Berkeley. (2005). Yurok Language Project. [Online]. Available http://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~yurok/web/goals.html (22 April 2008).

Yurok Tribe. (2008). Yurok Tribe Language Program Homepage. [Online]. Available http://www.yuroktribe.org/departments/education/Yurok_Tribe_Language_Program/index.htm (24 April 2008).

Works Consulted

Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival Homepage. [Online]. Available http://www.aicls.org [26 April 2008].

Forbes, Jack D. (1979). American Words: An Introduction to those native words used in English in the United States and Canada. Davis, University of California.