Upper Chinook, endonym Kiksht,[2] also known as Columbia Chinook, and Wasco-Wishram after its last surviving dialect, is a recently extinct language of the US Pacific Northwest. It had 69 speakers in 1990, of whom 7 were monolingual: five Wasco[3] and two Wishram. In 2001, there were five remaining speakers of Wasco.[4]
| Upper Chinook | |
|---|---|
| Kiksht | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Columbia River |
| Extinct | 11 July 2012, with the death of Gladys Thompson[1] |
Chinookan
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wac |
| Glottolog | wasc1239 |
| ELP | Wasco-Wishram |
The last fully fluent speaker of Kiksht, Gladys Thompson, died in July 2012.[1] She had been honored for her work by the Oregon Legislature in 2007.[5][6][7]Two new speakers were teaching Kiksht at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in 2006.[8] The Northwest Indian Language Institute of the University of Oregon formed a partnership to teach Kiksht and Numu in the Warm Springs schools.[9][10]Audio and video files of Kiksht are available at the Endangered Languages Archive.[11]
The last fluent speaker of the Wasco-Wishram dialect was Madeline Brunoe McInturff, and she died on 11 July 2006 at the age of 91.[12]
Dialects
- Multnomah, once spoken on Sauvie Island and in the Portland area in northwestern Oregon
- Kiksht
- Watlala or Watlalla, also known as Cascades, now extinct (two groups, one on each side of the Columbia River; the Oregon group were called Gahlawaihih [Curtis]).
- Hood River, now extinct (spoken by the Hood River Band of the Hood River Wasco in Oregon, also known as Ninuhltidih [Curtis] or Kwikwulit [Mooney])
- White Salmon, now extinct (spoken by the White Salmon River Band of Wishram in Washington)
- Wasco-Wishram (the Wishram lived north of the Columbia River in Washington and the kin Wasco lived south of the same river in Oregon)
- Clackamas, now extinct, was spoken in northwestern Oregon along the Clackamas and Sandy rivers.
Kathlamet has been classified as an additional dialect; it was not mutually intelligible.
Phonology
Vowels in Kiksht are as follows: /u a i ɛ ə/.
References
Bibliography
- Sapir, Edward; Curtin, Jeremiah (1909). Wishram texts, together with Wasco tales and myths. E.J. Brill. ASIN: B000855RIW.
- Dyk, Walter (1933). A Grammar of Wishram. New Haven: Yale University: Yale University Press.
External links
- Nariyo Kono. "Conversational Kiksht". Endangered Languages Archive. Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- Kiksht - Washco Wishram - Upper Chinook videos, YouTube
- Wasco-Wishram Indian Language (Upper Chinook, Kiksht, Clackamas) at native-languages.org
- Digital Kiksht, video about digitizing Kiksht language materials
- Audio of spoken Kiksht