Wiyot language facts for kids

The Wiyot language (also called Wishosk or Soulatluk, which means 'your jaw') was spoken by the Wiyot people. They lived around Humboldt Bay in California, United States. Sadly, the last person who spoke Wiyot as their first language, Della Prince, passed away in 1962. This meant the language became extinct.

For a long time, experts wondered if Wiyot was related to other languages. In 1913, a linguist named Edward Sapir suggested that Wiyot and the nearby Yurok language were related to the Algonquian languages. This was a big surprise because Algonquian languages are spoken very far away! This idea caused a lot of debate among language scientists. However, by the 1950s, most researchers agreed that Wiyot, Yurok, and Algonquian languages were indeed related. Because of this, they created the term Algic to group them all together.

Today, the Wiyot Tribal Government is working hard to bring their language back to life. They create videos, online dictionaries, and even an annual Wiyot language calendar to help people learn and use the language again.

Sounds of Wiyot Language

In 1964, a linguist named Karl V. Teeter wrote an important book about the Wiyot language. He got his information from Della Prince, the last native speaker, just before she passed away. His work was very important in showing how Wiyot was connected to other languages.

Wiyot Consonants

Wiyot had many different consonant sounds. Some of these sounds were like 'p', 't', 'k', 's', 'm', and 'n' in English. But Wiyot also had sounds that are not found in English, like 'ł' (a sound made by air flowing over the sides of the tongue) and 'č' (like the 'ch' in 'church'). Some sounds were "aspirated," meaning they had a little puff of air after them, like 'pʰ' or 'tʰ'.

Wiyot Vowels

The Wiyot language had five main vowel sounds:

• i (like the 'ee' in 'see')
• u (like the 'oo' in 'moon')
• e (like the 'e' in 'bed')
• a (like the 'a' in 'father')
• o (like the 'o' in 'hot')

How Syllables Work

In Wiyot, every syllable (a part of a word) always started with a consonant or a group of consonants. This was followed by a vowel. If the vowel was short, the syllable would end with the same consonant that started the next syllable. This made many syllables "heavy," meaning they had a long vowel or ended with a consonant.

For example, in the Wiyot word palógih (meaning 'flounder'), the 'l' sound was held longer. The first syllable ended with 'l', and the second syllable began with 'l'. This made both syllables sound "heavy" to English speakers.

Pitch and Stress

Wiyot words were often grouped into "pitch accent phrases." In these phrases, the sound of the voice would change, getting higher or lower, and some syllables would be stressed more than others.

The pitch and vowel length would slowly increase through a phrase until a special "culminative syllable" was reached. After this syllable, the pitch would quickly drop, unless it was the very last syllable of the phrase. If it was the last syllable, the phrase would end on a high pitch.

Sometimes, a special mark (like an accent mark) was used over the vowel of the culminative syllable. This mark showed if the pitch stayed high or quickly fell. Even with these complex pitch changes, the overall range of pitches in Wiyot was smaller than in English.

Example of Pitch

Let's look at an example from a Wiyot story: kowa baktéthohlabił, búl, kiš dókwahl, ku lulawá, kud kuhwil. łekoku lulawìl. This means: 'She began to throw aside the boards of the house, thinking in vain, 'I'll take that man back.' She never took him back.'

This example has two main parts, like two sentences. In the first part, the word kowa baktéthohlabił has its main stress on the fourth syllable, 'té'. The 'e' in 'té' was said with a higher pitch and held longer than other vowels in that part of the sentence. After this, the pitch and length of sounds would quickly go down.

In the second part, łekoku lulawìl, the main stressed syllable is the very last one, 'wìl'. This means the pitch and length of sounds would increase all the way to the end of the phrase. The mark over the 'i' shows that the pitch started high and then quickly fell.

How Wiyot Words Are Built

Wiyot is a "synthetic" and "agglutinative" language. This means that words are often built by joining many smaller parts, called stems and affixes, together. These parts can be added to the beginning (prefixes) or end (suffixes) of words. Both verbs (action words) and nouns (naming words) are made this way.

Stems: The Core of Words

Stems are the main parts of words that carry meaning. They can appear alone or be combined with other stems. For example, thig- means 'out'. It can be used alone or joined with -atol, which means 'go'. Together, they form thigatol-, meaning 'go out'. This new combination is also a stem.

Stems are either "initial" or "medial."

• Initial stems can start a word or be the only stem in a word. Most stems are initial. They always begin with a consonant.
• Medial stems cannot start a word. They must be combined with an initial stem. Medial stems always begin with a vowel. For example, -athohl means 'throw' or 'jump'. It can be combined with a special initial 'l-' to form lathohl-, which also means 'throw'.

Affixes: Adding Meaning

Wiyot affixes are small parts added to stems to change their meaning or how they are used in a sentence. There are three main types:

• Derivational affixes are added to stems to create new words or change their type. For example, the stem rakh- means 'laugh'. If you add the derivational affix -ohw, it becomes rakhohw-, meaning 'laugh at'. This changes the verb to mean laughing at something or someone.

• Inflectional affixes tell us who is doing the action (the subject) and who the action is being done to (the object). Wiyot had different sets of these affixes for definite (specific) and indefinite (general) subjects. Some verbs could also have affixes that showed if an action was done for someone's benefit or if a tool was used.

* For example, the noun rakhóhwalił means 'he/she laughs at me'. Here, -al is an affix that means 'me' (first person object), and -ił means 'he/she' (third person subject).

• Syntactic affixes (often prefixes called "preverbs") are added to verb themes. They often tell us about the aspect (how an action unfolds over time), tense (when an action happens), or mood (the speaker's attitude).

* For example, in łekowa khúhnad ('finally it starts to get dark'), khuhn- means 'to get dark'. The prefix łe- means 'finally', and kowa- means 'it starts'. * Wiyot verbs could have up to four preverbs, and they always appeared in a specific order. * Some examples of preverbs: * ła: means 'just finished' (like in ła kítapaluy - 'They just got through eating'). * bu: means 'had already' (like in bu tikwátolił - 'He had come down.'). * ki: means 'never' (like in ki bołùy - 'They never eat.').

Making Nouns from Verbs

In Wiyot, nouns were often created from verbs. This was a very important way to make new words. Usually, a noun was made by adding one of twelve special "nominalizing" affixes to a verb.

The most common nominalizing suffix was -ił. For example, bacawáłiksił (meaning 'swan') comes from the verb meaning 'he makes it dry'. Another example is bacigadarawił (meaning 'robin'), which comes from the verb meaning 'he is dry on the eyes'.

A clearer example uses the suffix -ihla: táthotawihla (meaning 'football') comes from the verb meaning 'it goes with a kicking motion'.

How Nouns Change

Wiyot nouns changed their form based on four categories:

• Subordinative: This shows that a noun belongs to another person or idea. For example, waptáhl means 'his teeth'. It combines wapt- ('teeth') with -ahl ('his').

• Possessive: This shows who owns something. Wiyot had different ways to show possession, usually by adding prefixes (parts at the beginning of the word).

* The most common way used prefixes like duh- (my), khuh- (your), and huh- (his/her/its). For example, khuhlóš means 'your strawberries'. * For things that are always "owned" (like body parts), different prefixes were used: d- (my) and kh- (your). These prefixes often replaced the first sound of the noun. So, wapt ('teeth') became khápt ('your teeth'). * For family terms and the word for 'nose', the second person possessive was shown by making the first sound of the noun "aspirated" (with a puff of air). So, čul ('maternal aunt') became čhul ('your maternal aunt').

• Locative: This shows where something is (at, on, near, above, under, etc.). It used either the suffix -okw or the prefix ho-.

* -okw was used with most nouns, like in kwásokw ('on the hill'). * ho- was used with body parts and family terms. For example, hola wáptihyam means 'on your teeth'.

• Vocative: This was a single prefix, ho-, used only with family terms to call out to someone. For example, hóko was used to call 'mother'.

Pronouns: Standing in for Nouns

Wiyot pronouns (words like 'I', 'you', 'he', 'we') were used to make it clearer who the subject or object of a verb was, especially since Wiyot verbs didn't always show if it was one person or many.

Here are some Wiyot pronouns:

For example, hi walúy, hinód means 'we saw'. Here, walúy could mean 'they saw', but hinód clearly tells us 'we' saw.

How Wiyot Sentences Are Made

Verbs were the most important part of Wiyot sentences. Often, the verb itself would give a lot of information about who was doing the action and who it was done to. Nouns and pronouns were then used to add more specific details.

Wiyot sentences could be put together in many different ways. Most Wiyot sentences described things that were actually happening or were facts.

Here are a couple of examples:

• kwháli yał, koto walùy.

* This literally means 'but they don't see it here'. However, in this case, the verb was used to mean 'grow', so the full meaning is 'but it doesn't grow here'. * kwháli yał means 'here but'. * koto walùy is the verb part: ko means 'not', to is another small word, and walùy means 'see' (or 'grow' in this special use).

• kwołto ku tikwó, bocókwotwił.

* This means 'That white man is surprised about something'. * kwołto means 'something' and is the object of the sentence. * ku tikwó means 'that white man' and tells us who the subject is. * bocókwotwił is the verb 'to be surprised'.

Bringing Wiyot Back

After Della Prince passed away in 1962, the Wiyot language became extinct. However, in recent years, the Wiyot tribe has been working hard to bring their language back to life.

The tribe offers language classes on their website and creates Wiyot language materials, like calendars, for people to use. As of 2014, there were no fluent speakers of Wiyot, but the tribe continues its efforts to teach and revive this important part of their heritage.

See also

In Spanish: Idioma wiyot para niños