Quileute /ˈkwɪlɪjuːt/,[2] sometimes alternatively anglicized as Quillayute /kwɪˈleɪjuːt/, is an extinct language, and was the last Chimakuan language, spoken natively until the end of the 20th century by Quileute and Makah elders on the western coast of the Olympic peninsula south of Cape Flattery at La Push and the lower Hoh River in Washington state, United States. The name Quileute comes from kʷoʔlí·yot’ [kʷoʔléːjotʼ], the name of a village at La Push.
| Quileute | |
|---|---|
| Kʷòʔlíyotʼ | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Olympic Peninsula, Washington |
| Ethnicity | 500 Quileute (2007)[1] |
| Extinct | 1999[1] |
Language family | Chimakuan
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| Dialects |
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | qui |
| Glottolog | quil1240 |
| ELP | Quileute |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. | |
Quileute is famous for its lack of nasal sounds, such as [m], [n], or nasal vowels, an areal feature of Puget Sound.[3] Quileute is polysynthetic and words can be quite long.
There were ten elderly speakers in 1977, and "a few" in 1999.[4] The Quileute Nation is attempting to prevent the loss of the language by teaching it in the Quileute Tribal School, using books written for the students by the tribal elders.
[In 2007], the Tribal Council set up a two-year Quileute Revitalization Project with the goal of encouraging the use of Quileute words and phrases in everyday village life. A basic vocabulary of greetings, questions, numbers, names of things, and "one-liners" in Quileute were made available to tribal members and staff through informal classes, email and computer CDs.[5]
Quileute has three vowels, /e/, /a/, /o/ long and short (pronounced [e]~[i]~[ɪ]~[ɛ], [a]~[ə], [o]~[u] when short and in non-tonic syllables),[6] as well as /æː/ which only occurs long. Stress is historically penultimate, though this has become somewhat obscured and is no longer predictable. It also has the unique quality, even in comparison to most other indigenous languages, of having no nasal consonants. It has the following consonants (t͡ɬ and ɡ are rare):
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lateral | plain | labialized | plain | labialized | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | kʷ | q | qʷ | ʔ | |||
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | kʼ | kʷʼ | qʼ | qʷʼ | |||||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ||||||||
| Affricate | plain | t͡s | t͡ɬ | t͡ʃ | |||||||
| ejective | t͡sʼ | t͡ɬʼ | t͡ʃʼ | ||||||||
| Fricative | s | ɬ | ʃ | x | xʷ | χ | χʷ | h | |||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||||||
Quileute features a prefix system that changes depending on the physical characteristics of the person being spoken of, the speaker, or rarely the person being addressed.[7] When speaking of a cross-eyed person, /t͡ɬ-/ is prefixed to each word. When speaking of a hunchback, the prefix /t͡sʼ-/ is used. Additional prefixes are also used for short men (/s-/), "funny people" (/t͡ʃk-/), and people that have difficulty walking (/t͡ʃχ-/).[8][7]
Most affixes and forms representing an abnormal type of speech are used either by the speaker himself or by another person speaking of the individual whom such a speech-form intends to single out. In few cases only is the abnormal form used in direct address, the reason for this being too apparent to require any comment. [pp. 296–297]
Quileute | |
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| Peoples, Government, and Culture |
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| Local Towns |
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| Local Geography and Places |
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| Things named after the Quileute |
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