Kitanemuk language

Kitanemuk was a Northern Uto-Aztecan language of the Takic branch. It was very closely related to Serrano, and may have been a dialect of Serrano. The last speakers lived some time in the 1940s, though the last fieldwork was carried out in 1937. J. P. Harrington took copious notes in the 1916 and 1917, however, which has allowed for a fairly detailed knowledge of the language.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Kitanemuk, as reconstructed by Anderton (1988) based on Harrington's field notes, were (with some standard Americanist phonetic notation in <angle brackets>:

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
				plain	labio.
Nasal	/m/	/n/		/ŋ/
Plosive	/p/	/t/		/k/	/kʷ/	/ʔ/
Affricate		/ts/ <c>	/tʃ/ <č>
Fricative	/v/	/s/	/ʃ/ <š>			/h/
Rhotic		/r/
Approximant		/l	/j/ <y>		/enwiki/w/

Word-finally, /h/ becomes [r], and all voiced consonants become voiceless before other voiceless consonants or word-finally.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

References

• Anderton, Alice J. (1988). The Language of the Kitanemuks of California. PhD. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.
• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Four Directions Institute: Kitanemuk
• Native Languages: Kitanemuk