Mutsun language

Mutsun
San Juan Bautista
Spoken in	United States
Region	California
Extinct	?
Language family	Yok-Utian Utian Costanoan Southern Ohlone Mutsun
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	css
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Area where the Utian languages were spoken

Mutsun is both: a name of one sub-group of the Ohlone indigenous people of Alta California; and the name of the native language the Mutsun tribes spoke.

The people

Mutsun (also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan) is an extinct Utian language in the Ohlone/Costanoan language family that was spoken in Northern California by the division of the Ohlone who lived in the Mission San Juan Bautista area.

The language

Ascencion Solorsano, who died in 1930, was the last native speaker of Mutsun. Mutsun went extinct from a gradual process of the Mutsun being forced to switch to speaking Spanish and English. The Spanish wrote a grammar of the language, and linguist John Peabody Harrington collected very extensive notes on the language from Solorsano. Harrington's field notes formed the basis of the grammar of Mutsun^[1] written by Marc Okrand as a University of California dissertation in 1977, which to this day remains the only grammar ever written of any Costanoan language. Many Mutsun people who live in California today are trying to restore their language.

Phonology

^[2]

Consonants

	Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Alveolo-palatal/ Palatal palatalised	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m /m/	n /n/		nY /nʲ/
Stop	p /p/	t /t/	tR /ʈ/	tY /tʲ/	k /k/	/ʔ/
Affricate		c /ts/	č /ts̠/
Fricative		s /s/	sY /ʃ/			h /h/
Central Approximant	w /w/			y /j/
Lateral approximant		l /l/		lY /lʲ/
Flap		r /r/

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i /i/	u /u/
Close-mid		o /o/
Open-mid	e /ɛ/
Open		a /ɑ/

Vocabulary

English	Mutsun
one	hemetca
two	tRhin
three	kaphan
four	utRit
five	parwes
six	nakitci
seven	takitci
eight	tayitmin
nine	pakki
ten	tansakte

Notable Mutsun Ohlone people

• 1913 – Barbara Solorsano died 1913, Mutsun linguistic consultant to C. Hart Merriam 1902-04, from San Juan Bautista (Teixeira 1997:33, 40).
• 1930 – Ascención Solorsano de Cervantes, died 1930, renowned Mutsun doctor, principal linguistic and cultural informant to J. P. Harrington (Ortiz 1994:133).

See also

• Ohlone
• Native Americans in the United States

References

1. ^ Okrand, M. (1977). Mutsun grammar. University of California, Berkeley.. http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~survey/documents/dissertations/okrand-1977.pdf. 
2. ^ http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~survey/documents/dissertations/okrand-1977.pdf (page 21)

• Okrand, Marc. 1977. "Mutsun Grammar". Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
• Ortiz, Beverly R. 1994. Chocheño and Rumsen Narratives: A Comparison. In The Ohlone: Past and Present, pp. 99–164.
• Teixeira, Lauren S. 1997. The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area—A Research Guide. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press.

External links

• Amah-Mutsun Tribe Website
• Grammar of Mutsun by Arroyo de la Cuesta, Felipe (1842) (in Spanish)
• Mutsun language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages

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