Wappo language facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Wappo |
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| Native to | United States | |||
| Region | Alexander Valley, California | |||
| Ethnicity | Wappo people | |||
| Extinct | 1990, with the death of Laura Fish Somersal | |||
| Language family |
Yuki–Wappo
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Pre-contact distribution of the Wappo language
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Wappo was a language spoken by the Wappo tribe, a group of Native Americans who lived in what is now the Alexander Valley in California. Sadly, Wappo is now an extinct language. The last person who spoke it fluently, Laura Fish Somersal, passed away in 1990. The main reason this language disappeared was because people started using English more in schools and at work.
Many experts believe that Wappo is distantly related to the Yuki language. It also shows signs of being influenced by Pomoan languages, which were spoken by nearby tribes.
Laura Fish Somersal, the last fluent speaker, said that the name "Wappo" comes from the Spanish word guapo. This word means "handsome" or "brave." The Wappo people called themselves Micewal. The Pomoan people, who were neighbors, called them Ashochimi, which meant "northerners."
Many linguists, who are people who study languages, have worked to understand Wappo. Paul Radin wrote some of the first texts about Wappo grammar in the 1920s. Later, Jesse O. Sawyer published an English-Wappo Vocabulary in 1965 and kept studying the language. Other important linguists who studied Wappo include William E. Elmendorf, Alice Shepherd, Sandra Thompson, Joseph Sung-Yul Park, and Charles N. Li.
Contents
Sounds of Wappo
Every language has its own unique sounds, like vowels and consonants. Wappo had its own set of these sounds.
Vowels
Wappo had five main vowel sounds. These are similar to the vowels you hear in English, like 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'. There's some debate among linguists about whether Wappo had long or short versions of these vowels. Some researchers heard long vowels, while others working with the same speaker did not.
Wappo also had combinations of two vowel sounds, called diphthongs. These are like the "oy" sound in "boy" or the "ow" sound in "cow."
Consonants
Wappo had many different consonant sounds. Some of these sounds were like those in English, but others were special. For example, Wappo had different types of "stop" sounds. These are sounds where you stop the air completely, like the 'p' or 't' in English. Wappo had plain stops, aspirated stops (where you release a puff of air, like the 'p' in "pot"), and glottalized stops (where you use a quick catch in your throat, like the sound between "uh-oh").
Some sounds, like 'f', 'd', 'g', and 'r', were mainly used in words that Wappo borrowed from Spanish.
Stress and Tone
In Wappo, the stress in a word was usually easy to guess. The first part of the main word (the "stem") was always stressed. For example, in méhwa (meaning "wild grape vine"), the stress is on the first part, "mé."
Wappo did not use tone to change the meaning of words. This is different from languages like Chinese, where the way you say a word (high tone, low tone) can change what it means.
How Wappo Words Change
Languages often change words to show different meanings. This is called morphology. Wappo had interesting ways to change its nouns and verbs.
Nouns
Nouns are words for people, places, or things. In Wappo, nouns were divided into two groups: human and non-human. This was important for making words plural (meaning more than one). For human nouns, you would always add an ending to show there were many. But for non-human nouns, you didn't always have to add an ending, even if you were talking about many of them. For example, "Indians" would get a plural ending, but "apples" might not, even if there were many apples.
Verbs
Verbs are action words. Wappo verbs changed a lot to show when something happened (tense) or how it happened (aspect). For example, there were different ways to show if something was happening now (habitual/progressive), had already happened (past), or was about to happen (future).
Wappo verbs also changed their form depending on the tense. Sometimes, special endings were added to verbs. For example, to say "sleep" in a command, the verb stem would change.
Wappo also used prefixes, which are small parts added to the beginning of a word. Some prefixes showed direction, like "away from the speaker" or "toward the speaker." Other prefixes could mean "around" or "accidentally." There were also special words added before verbs to show if someone wished something was true or if they "could" or "should" do something.
How Wappo Sentences Are Built
The way words are put together to form sentences is called syntax.
Word Order
In Wappo, the verb usually came at the end of the sentence. For example, instead of "I eat acorn mush," it might be more like "I acorn mush eat."
However, Wappo could be a bit flexible with word order, especially in certain types of sentences. This means that sometimes, the order of words could change without changing the meaning of the sentence.
When describing nouns, words like "this" or "that" (demonstratives) and words showing who something belongs to (genitives) came before the noun. But numbers and descriptive words (adjectives) came after the noun.
Case System
Wappo had a special system called a "case system." This means that words would get different endings to show their role in a sentence. For example, an ending might show who is doing the action, who the action is happening to, or who benefits from the action.
- The person or thing receiving the action (like the "ball" in "I hit the ball") often didn't have a special ending.
- The person or thing doing the action (like "I" in "I hit the ball") usually got an ending like -i.
- If something was given to someone, it would get an ending like -thu.
- If an action was done for someone, it would get an ending like -ma.
- If something was used with an object (like a knife), it would get an ending like -thiʔ.
- If someone went with another person, it would get an ending like -k'a.
- To show who something belonged to (if it could be given away), an ending like -meʔ was used.
- Wappo also had endings to show location, like "away from" or "on top of."
Asking Questions
Yes-no Questions
To ask a question that could be answered with "yes" or "no," Wappo added a special question word, like /hVʔ/, after the verb. This word's vowel sound would often change to match the vowel sound before it. For example, "Do you like me?" would have this question word.
Question-word Questions
When asking questions using words like "who," "what," or "where," these question words usually came at the beginning of the sentence. These question words could also get special endings, just like other nouns, to show their role in the sentence.
Sometimes, these question words could also be used as "indefinite pronouns," meaning "someone," "something," or "nobody." For example, a sentence might mean "s/he went to buy something" or "nobody saw me."
Language Contact and Influence
Languages often influence each other when people who speak them live close together. Wappo was influenced by contact with Spanish and English.
Spanish influenced Wappo's sounds and vocabulary. Some Spanish sounds, like 'f', 'd', 'g', and 'r', were added to Wappo. Many of the first words borrowed from Spanish were for things that were traded, like chícharo (pea) becoming čičaloʔ in Wappo, and arroz (rice) becoming háros.
English didn't change Wappo's vocabulary much, but it did affect how sentences were put together (syntax). For example, the way Wappo used the "benefactive case" (showing who benefits from an action) might have become wider because of English. Also, the fact that question words usually came at the beginning of a sentence in Wappo is unusual for a language where the verb usually comes last, and this might be due to English influence.
Another example of English influence is how the Wappo word neʔ-khiʔ, meaning "have," also came to mean "have to" (like "I have to go").
Different Kinds of Wappo
Wappo was not exactly the same everywhere it was spoken. There were five different kinds, or varieties, of Wappo:
- Clear Lake Wappo
- Russian River Wappo (also called Western Wappo)
- Northern Wappo
- Central Wappo
- Southern Wappo
Images for kids
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Pre-contact distribution of the Wappo language
See also
In Spanish: Idioma wappo para niños
