| Also Known As: Quileute Language
Description:
Quileute (pronounced /ˈkwɪlijuːt/), also known as Quillayute (pronounced /kwɨˈleɪjuːt/), is the only surviving Chimakuan language, spoken by a few Quileute and Makah elders on the western coast of the Olympic peninsula south of Cape Flattery at La Push and the lower Hoh River. The name Quileute comes from kʷoʔlí·yot’ [kʷoʔléːjotʼ], the name of a village at La Push.
Quileute is famous for its lack of nasal sounds, such as [m], [n], or nasal vowels, an areal feature of Puget Sound. Quileute is polysynthetic and words can be quite long, as in kitlayakwokwilkwolasstaxasalas "those are the people who think that I am the one who is going to Forks."
There were ten elderly speakers in 1977, and "a few" in 1999. The Quileute Nation is attempting to prevent the loss of the language by teaching it in the Quileute Tribal School, using books written for the students by the tribal elders.
Quileute has three vowels, /e/, /a/, /o/ long and short (pronounced [i], [ə], [o] when short and in non-tonic syllables), as well as /æː/ which only occurs long. Stress is historically penultimate, though this has become somewhat obscured and is no longer predictable. It has the following consonants (t͡ɬ and ɡ..... full article at Wikipedia |
