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(Redirected from Nehalem language)
Extinct Salishan language of northwestern Oregon, US
Tillamook is an extinctSalishan language, formerly spoken by the Tillamook people in northwestern Oregon, United States. The last fluent speaker was Minnie Scovell who died in 1972. In an effort to prevent the language from being lost, a group of researchers from the University of Hawaii interviewed the few remaining Tillamook-speakers and created a 120-page dictionary.
The so-called "rounded" consonants (traditionally marked with the diacritic ⟨ʷ⟩, but here indicated with ⟨ᵓ⟩), including rounded vowels and ⟨w⟩ (/ɰᵓ/), are not actually labialized. The acoustic effect of labialization is created entirely inside the mouth by cupping the tongue (sulcalization). Uvulars with this distinctive internal rounding have "a kind of ɔ timbre" while "rounded" front velars have ɯ coloring. These contrast and oppose otherwise very similar segments having ɛ or ɪ coloring—the "unrounded" consonants.
/w/ is also formed with this internal rounding instead of true labialization, making it akin to . So are vowel sounds formerly written as /o/ or /u/, which are best characterized as the diphthong /əɰ/ with increasing internal rounding.
Thompson, Lawrence C.; Thompson, M. Terry (1966). "A Fresh Look at Tillamook Phonology". International Journal of American Linguistics. 32 (4): 313–319. doi:10.1086/464920. JSTOR1264085. S2CID145658086.
Tillamook is classified as Extinct by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger