| Also Known As: Seri language
Description:
Seri (referred to as cmiique iitom by the Seri people) is a language isolate spoken by the Seri people in two villages on the coast of Sonora, Mexico.
The term Serian family may be used to refer to a language family with Seri as its only living member; related languages have disappeared in the last couple of centuries. Attempts have been made to link it to the Yuman family, to the now-extinct Salinan language of California, and to the much larger hypothetical Hokan family. These hypotheses came out of a period when attempts were being made to group all of the languages of the Americas into families. In the case of Seri, however, very little evidence has ever been produced. Until such evidence is presented and evaluated, the language is most appropriately considered an isolate.
The name Seri is an exonym for this people that has been used since the first contacts with the Spaniards (sometimes written differently, as ceres). Gilg reported in 1692 that it was a Spanish name, but surely it was the name used by another group of the area to refer to the Seris. Nevertheless, modern claims that it is a Yaqui or Opata name that means something like "people of the sand" or "people who run..... full article at Wikipedia |
