Awaswas language

Last updated
Awaswas
Santa Cruz
Native to United States
Region California
Extinct 19th century [1]
Yok-Utian
Dialectsfour varieties [2]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 (included in Northern Ohlone [cst])
Glottolog sant1428
Ohlone color map.svg
Map of Ohlone varieties with   Awaswas
Chapel of the Mission Santa Cruz, reconstruction. MissionSantaCruzCalifornia.jpg
Chapel of the Mission Santa Cruz, reconstruction.

Awaswas, or Santa Cruz, is one of eight Ohlone languages. It was historically spoken by the Awaswas people, an indigenous people of California. The last speaker of Awaswas died in the 19th century, and the language has been extinct ever since. [1]

Contents

Linguists originally called the language Santa Cruz after the mission in the area, but it was renamed to Awaswas as part of a move in the late 1960s and early 1970s by graduate students at the University of California Berkeley to use native names for the Ohlone languages. [3] 'Awaswas' is derived from the term ʔawas-was, meaning 'north-people from there'. [4]

Area where the Utian languages were spoken Utian langs (cropped).png
Area where the Utian languages were spoken

History

The Awaswas lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains and along the coast of present-day Santa Cruz County from present-day Davenport to Aptos. Awaswas became the main language spoken at the Mission Santa Cruz. [5] However, there is evidence that this grouping was more geographic than linguistic, and that the records of the "Santa Cruz Costanoan" language in fact represent several diverse dialects. A report from 1952 identified four different distinct forms of Costanoan [2] and a more recent report from 2009 states, "No area in North America was more crowded with distinct languages and language families than central California at the time of Spanish contact." [3]

The Ohlone language group is broken into branches with the most related languages grouped together. Awaswas has been grouped in both the northern and southern branches with different research disagreeing on the best fitting classification. Some branches within the Ohlone language group have been described as being as similar to each other as different local dialects of Italian, while others, such as Rumsen, Mutsun, and Awaswas "were as closely related as French, Spanish, and Portuguese." [3]

In 2012, Amah Mutsun  [ Wikidata ] Tribal Chairman Valentin Lopez stated that "his great-great-grandmother was the last of the Awaswas speakers." [6]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 "Awaswas". California Language Archive. Retrieved 2024-09-02.
  2. 1 2 Heizer, R. F., ed. (1952). "California Indian Linguistic Records: The Mission Indian Vocabularies of Alphonse Pinart" (PDF). Anthropological Records. 15 (1). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
  3. 1 2 3 Milliken, Randall; Shoup, Laurence H.; Oritz, Beverly R. (2009). "Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today". Government Documents and Publications: 17–36.
  4. Golla, Victor (2011). California Indian languages. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN   978-0-520-26667-4. OCLC   668191602.
  5. "Awaswas". Survey of California and Other Indian Languages . Retrieved 2012-07-28.
  6. Donna Jones (2012-12-21). "Healing ceremonies recall California Mission heritage". Santa Cruz Sentinel. Retrieved 2012-12-23.

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References