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Washo
Washoe
wá꞉šiw ʔítlu
Native to	United States
Region	California–Nevada border
Ethnicity	Washoe people
Native speakers	20 (2008)
Language family	Hokan? or language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-2	was
ISO 639-3	was
Glottolog	wash1253
ELP	Washo
Pre-contact distribution of the Washo language

Washo /ˈwɒʃoʊ/ (or Washoe; endonym wá꞉šiw ʔítlu) is an endangered Native American language isolate spoken by the Washo on the California–Nevada border in the drainages of the Truckee and Carson Rivers, especially around Lake Tahoe. While there were only 20 elderly native speakers of Washo as of 2011, since 1994 there had been a small immersion school that has produced a number of moderately fluent younger speakers. The immersion school has since closed its doors and the language program now operates through the Cultural Resource Department for the Washoe Tribe. The language is still very much endangered; however, there has been a renaissance in the language revitalization movement as many of the students who attended the original immersion school have become teachers.

Ethnographic Washo speakers belonged to the Great Basin culture area and they were the only non-Numic group of that area. The language has borrowed from the neighboring Uto-Aztecan, Maiduan and Miwokan languages and is connected to both the Great Basin and Northern California sprachbunds.

History

In 2012, Lakeview Commons Park in South Lake Tahoe was renamed in the Washo language. "The Washoe Tribe has presented the name Tahnu Leweh (pronounced approx. ) which, in native language, means "all the people's place." It is a name the Tribe would like to gift to El Dorado County and South Lake Tahoe as a symbol of peace, prosperity and goodness."

Classification

Washo is usually considered a language isolate. That is, it shares no demonstrated link with any other language, including its three direct neighboring languages, Northern Paiute (a Numic language of Uto-Aztecan), Maidu (Maiduan), and Sierra Miwok (Utian). It is sometimes classified as a Hokan language, but this language family is not universally accepted among specialists, nor is Washo's connection to it.

The language was first described in A Grammar of the Washo Language by William H. Jacobsen, Jr., in a University of California, Berkeley, PhD dissertation and this remains the sole complete description of the language. There is no significant dialect variation. (Jacobsen's lifelong work with Washo is described at the University of Nevada Oral History Program.)

Dialects

Washo shows very little geographic variation. Jacobsen (1986:108) wrote, "When there are two variants of a feature, generally one is found in a more northerly area and the other in a more southerly one, but the lines separating the two areas for the different features do not always coincide."

Phonology

Vowels

There are six distinct vowel qualities found in the Washo language, each of which occurs long and short. The sound quality of a vowel is dependent upon their length and the consonant they precede, as well as the stress put on the vowel.

Vowels marked with the acute accent ( ´ ) are pronounced with stress, such as in the Washo ćigábut (summer).

In Washo, vowels can have either long or short length qualities; the longer quality is noted by appending a colon ⟨꞉⟩ to the vowel, as in the above example míši milí꞉giyi. Vowels with such a mark are usually pronounced for twice the normal length. This can be seen in the difference between the words móko (shoes) mó꞉ko (knee). However, vowels pronounced this way may not always be followed by a colon.

Jacobsen described in detail various vowel alternations that distinguished the Washo speech communities.

Consonants

Sequences not represented by a single letter in Washo almost always tend to occur in borrowed English words, such as the nd in kꞌindí (candy).

In the area around Woodfords, California, the local Washo dialect substituted for /s/, thus, sí꞉su 'bird' was pronounced thithu.

Morphology

Washo has a complex tense system.

Washo uses partial or total reduplication of verbs or nouns to indicate repetitive aspect or plural number. Washo uses both prefixation and suffixation on nouns and verbs.

Verbs

Verbal inflection is rich with a large number of tenses. Tense is usually carried by a suffix that attaches to the verb. The tense suffix may signal recent past, intermediate past, the long-ago-but-remembered past, the distant past, the intermediate future, or the distant future. For example, the suffix -leg indicates that the verb describes an event that took place in the recent past, usually earlier the previous day as seen in the Washo sentence, dabóʔo lew búʔlegi ('the white man fed us').

Nouns

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2008)

Possession in Washo is shown by prefixes added to the object. There are two sets of prefixes added: the first set if the object begins with a vowel and the second set if the object begins with a consonant.

See also

• Washoe tribe
• Native American languages

References

1. ^ Victor Golla (2011) California Indian Languages
2. Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh
3. "The Washo Project: wá꞉šiw ʔítlu". The Washo Project. University of Chicago. Retrieved September 9, 2011.
4. d'Azevedo 1986
5. Jeff Munson (April 16, 2012). "Washoe offers sacred name 'Tahnu Leweh' for Lakeview Commons in South Lake Tahoe". Carson City Nevada News - Carson Now. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
6. Lyle Campbell. American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. (1997, Oxford, pg. 125).
   Marianne Mithun. The Languages of Native North America (1999, Cambridge, pg. 557)
7. WA SHE SHU: "The Washoe People", Past and Present. The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California
8. "William Jacobson Jr". University of Nevada Oral History Program. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
9. "Vowels". The Washo Project.
10. Jacobsen, William H. Jr. (December 1996). Tuohy, Donald R. (ed.). Beginning Washo (PDF). Nevada State Museum Occasional Papers. Vol. 5. Carson City, NV: Nevada State Museum. pp. 1–6.
11. Jacobsen, William H. Jr. (1978). "Washo Internal Diversity and External Relations". In Tuohy, Donald R. (ed.). Selected Papers from the 14th Great Basin Anthropological Conference. Ballena Press Publications in Archaeology, Ethnology and History. Vol. 11. Socorro, NM. pp. 115–147.
12. "The Washo Project". washo.uchicago.edu. Retrieved August 9, 2024.
13. Washoe Language Lessons
14. Caitlin Keliiaa. 2012. "Washiw Wagayay Maŋal: Reweaving the Washoe Language," University of California, Los Angeles MA thesis.

Sources

• Bright, William O. (2007). "North American Indian Languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. pp. 762–767.
• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• d'Azevedo, Warren L. (1986). "Washoe". In d'Azevedo, Warren L. (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 11: Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 466–498. ISBN 0-16-004578-9.
• Goddard, Ives, ed. (1996). Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 17: Languages. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-048774-9.
• Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Jacobsen, William Jr. (1964). A Grammar of the Washo Language. Berkeley: University of California Press. Retrieved September 27, 2016.
• Jacobsen, William H. (1986). "Washoe Language". In d'Azevedo, Warren L. (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 11: Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 107–112. ISBN 0-16-004578-9.
• Jacobsen, William H. (1996). Beginning Washo. Occasional Papers. Vol. 5. Nevada State Museum.
• Kaufman, Terrence (1988). "A Research Program for Reconstructing Proto-Hokan: First Gropings". In DeLancey, Scott (ed.). Papers from the 1988 Hokan–Penutian Languages Workshop. Publications of the Center for Amerindian Linguistics and Ethnography. Vol. 1. Eugene, Oregon: Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon. pp. 50–168.
• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7.
• "The Washo Project". The University of Chicago. 2008. Retrieved May 4, 2011.
• Yu, Alan C. L. (2006). "Quantity, stress and reduplication in Washo". Phonology. 22 (3): 437. doi:10.1017/S0952675705000679.

Further reading

• Dangberg, Grace (1927). Kroeber, A. L.; Lowie, Robert H. (eds.). "Washo texts" (PDF). University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology. 22 (3): 391–443.
• Kroeber, Alfred L. (1907). Putnam, Frederic Ward (ed.). "The Washo language of east central California and Nevada" (PDF). University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology. 4 (5): 251–317.

External links

• University of Chicago Washo Revitalization Project
  • Washo Online Lexicon
• Reno Linguist Foremost Expert on Washoe Language
• Washo basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• Washo language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• OLAC resources in and about the Washo language

• Language isolates of North America
• Indigenous languages of Nevada
• Indigenous languages of California
• Endangered languages of the United States
• Indigenous languages of the North American Great Basin
• Hokan languages
• Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas
• Washoe
• Endangered language isolates
• Native American language revitalization