Miluk language facts for kids

Miluk, also known as Lower Coquille, was one of two Coosan languages. It was spoken by the Miluk people in what is now Oregon, United States. The Miluk language shared many words with the Hanis language, another Coosan language. However, their grammar was different, making them sound quite distinct.

Miluk was spoken around the lower Coquille River and a part of Coos Bay. The name míluk comes from a village name. Sadly, Miluk is now an extinct language.

The Last Speakers of Miluk

The last person who spoke Miluk fluently was Annie Miner Peterson. She passed away in 1939. Annie knew both Miluk and Hanis very well. She made many recordings that help us learn about these languages today.

Another important speaker was Laura Hodgkiss Metcalf. Her mother was Miluk. Laura worked with a linguist named Morris Swadesh to share what she knew about the language. She passed away in 1961.

How Miluk Words Worked

Miluk had some interesting ways of putting words together.

Possession in Miluk

In Miluk, when you talked about something someone owned, you would say the owner first. For example, you would say "the boy's dog" as "boy the dog's". The word for the thing being owned didn't change much.

Miluk also had a special way to say "we" depending on who was included.

• If "we" meant "you and I," it used one set of sounds.
• If "we" meant "I and someone else, but not you," it used a different set of sounds.

Words for "The"

Miluk had two main words for "the": kʷə and ʎə.

• ʎə was used for things that were close to the speaker.
• kʷə was used for things that were farther away.

These words didn't tell you if something was male or female.

Verbs and Time

Miluk verbs changed to show if an action was happening, had happened, or was going to happen.

• A special ending, -u, was added to verbs that didn't have a direct object (like "he runs").
• The ending -ʔi showed an action that was still happening (like "he is running").
• The ending -t showed an action that was finished (like "he ran").

Miluk also had ways to talk about the future:

• The word han meant something was "going to happen."
• The word hanƛ meant something would happen in the future.

Miluk's Extinction

The Miluk language is now extinct, meaning no one speaks it as their native language anymore. The last fluent speaker, Annie Miner Peterson, died in 1939.

After Annie, two sisters, Lolly Hotchkiss and Daisy Wasson Codding, worked with a linguist in 1953. They tried to remember words from the language. However, they were not fluent as adults and found it hard to recall many words.

Annie Miner Peterson worked with a person named Melville Jacobs in the 1930s. Together, they created two books of stories and texts in both Miluk and Hanis. These books, called Coos Narrative and Ethnographic Texts and Coos Myth Texts, helped preserve the stories, even though they didn't include detailed grammar explanations. They only provided English translations.

These efforts are very important because they help us learn about and remember the Miluk language and the culture of the Miluk people.