Solano language

Solano
Olelato
Native to	Northeast Mexico
Region	near Mission San Francisco Solano
Ethnicity	Solano people
Extinct	18th century
Language family	unclassified (language isolate?)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xso
Linguist List	xso
Glottolog	sanf1266
Pre-contact distribution of Solano language

Solano is an unclassified extinct language formerly spoken in northeast Mexico and perhaps also in the neighboring U.S. state of Texas. It is a possible language isolate. ^[1]

Background

Solano is known only from a 21-word vocabulary list that appears at the end of a 1703–1708 baptism book from the San Francisco Solano Mission, ^[2] which hosted at least four different peoples, including the Xarame, Payuguan, Papanac, and Siaguan. ^[3] Supposedly the language is of the Indians of this mission – perhaps the Terocodame band cluster. The Solano peoples are associated with the 18th-century missions near Eagle Pass, Texas.

Word list

The 21 known Solano words, as reproduced in Swanton (1940), are: ^[4]

Solano	English
aapag	yes
apam	water
genin, genint	three
hikomeya, hycomeya	is she your sister?
hipayō, hypayô	to wish; Spanish: quiere (?)
kainika, cainica	tortilla
krisen, crisen; krigen, crigen	bad
nabaog	I am hungry
naha	mother
namō	eat it
nikaog, nicaog	meat
no	fur
paam	there is none
papam	father
saath	four
sieh	give me
sihik, sihic	tobacco
sopaam	sister
soyā	brother
tciene, chiene	salt
taapam	there are

Lexical comparison

Below is a comparison of selected words from Zamponi (2024). There are no obvious cognates with other neighboring languages. ^[3]

language	father	four	meat	mother	three	water
Solano	papam	saath	nikaog	naha	genin	apam
Lipan Apache [5]	-ʔaaší	dínínɁí	-cinin	-Ɂ-nándí	káíɁí	kó
Coahuilteco [6]	-xana·y	puwa·nc̉an	aha·wh	-ta·y	axtikpil	wan
Comecrudo [7]	mawiʹs	nawuiʹ	eweʹ, kai	maʹt, te	̉yiʹy	aʹx̣
Tonkawa [8]	ʔewas, ta·taʔ	sikit	ʔawas	xʔay, ʔesaʔ	metis	ʔa·x
Proto-Uto-Aztecan [9]	*na, *ta(ta), *ʔok	*mako’	*tuhku, *waʔi	*ye, *nan	*pahi	*pa

See also

• Solano people
• Amotomanco language
• Aranama language
• Tanpachoa language

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   0-19-509427-1.
• Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN   0-16-048774-9.
• Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978–present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 1–20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1–3, 16, 18–20 not yet published).

References

1. Campbell, Lyle (3 October 2017). Language Isolates. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-317-61091-5.
2. Association, Texas State Historical (2019-02-12). "San Francisco Solano Mission". Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 2024-01-30.
3. Zamponi, Raoul (2024). "Unclassified languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America. De Gruyter. pp. 1627–1648. doi:10.1515/9783110712742-061. ISBN   978-3-11-071274-2.
4. Swanton, John R. 1940. "Words from a dialect spoken near the mission of San Francisco Solano, below Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande". Linguistic material from the tribes of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico. (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 127). Washington: Government Printing Office. pp. 54-55.
5. Hoijer, Harry. 1956. "The chronology of the Athapaskan languages". International Journal of American Linguistics 22. 219–232.
6. Troike, Rudolph C. 1996. "Sketch of Coahuilteco, a language isolate of Texas". In Ives Goddard (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 17: Languages, 644–665. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
7. Swanton, John R. 1940. Linguistic material from the tribes of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico. (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 127). Washington: Government Printing Office.
8. Hoijer, Harry; Thomas R. Wier (editor). 2018. Tonkawa texts: a new linguistic edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
9. Miller, Wick R. 1967. Uto-Aztecan cognate sets. (University of California Publications in Linguistics 48). Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California.