Chinookan Languages

Information about the Chinookan languages

Where are the Chinookan languages spoken?

These languages are spoken by indigenous peoples of North America in the states of Oregon and Washington on the West Coast of the United States.

Who speaks these languages?

The Chinook language speakers are members of “First Nations” in North America who already inhabited the region long before Europeans arrived and before the creation of the United States and Canada. Today, speakers of Upper Chinook live on reservations in the United States.

Classification

The Chinookan language family currently contains a single, living language.

Total number of speakers (estimated):

Lower Chinook (alternate name: Coastal Chinook): extinct

Upper Chinook (alternate names: Columbia Chinook; Kiksht): 7 speakers according to UNESCO

Kathlamet (alternate names: Cathlamet; Katlamat): extinct

Comments on the classification of Chinookan languages:

Kathlamet was long considered to be a dialect of Upper Chinook but according to Mithun, there is no mutual understanding between speakers of these languages and Kathlamet contains linguistic characteristics that place it in an “intermediary” position between High and Low Chinook. This explains the fact that that some sources, the site ethnologue.com for example, cite only two languages for the Chinookan family.

Upper Chinook was originally a set of half a dozen dialects, spoken in the upper Columbia River of which only the Wasco-Wishram dialect is still active.

Note 1: It is important to distinguish between Chinookan languages and “Chinook jargon”. The latter is a ‘pidgin’ or ‘lingua franca’ which served as a trade language between speakers of different indigenous languages and Europeans throughout the region during the 19th and 20th centuries and which has now almost completely disappeared . It was based on a joint lexicon originating from various languages of the American Northwest, English and French.

Note 2: The Chinookan languages are sometimes included in the hypothetical superfamily “Penutian”. But according to Mithun (1999), the validity of this “superfamily” has not yet been demonstrated in a scientifically satisfactory manner. We therefore follow Mithun’s classification and present the Chinookan languages as a separate family.

Are the Chinookan languages in danger?

Yes. This small family of languages has almost entirely disappeared with only some elderly speakers of Wasco and Wishram, both dialects of High-Chinook, remaining. It now appears highly likely that this family will disappear completely in the next decade, if it is not already extinct.