Information about the Wintuan languages

Where are the Wintuan languages spoken?

These languages are spoken in North America, north of Sacramento, in the state of California in the United States.

Who speaks these languages?

The speakers of Wintuan languages are members of the Wintu, Nomlaki and Patwin, “First Nations” of North American who inhabited the region long before Europeans arrived and before the creation of the United States and Canada.

Total number of speakers (estimated):

2 according to UNESCO

6 according to the site ethnologue.com (SIL)

Classification

The Wintuan language family currently has 2 languages.

North  Wintuan

Nomlaki (alternate names: Noamlakee and Central Wintu): extinct

Wintu: 1 speaker according to UNESCO

South  Wintuan

Patwin: 1 speaker according to UNESCO

South Patwin: extinct

Comments on the classification of Wintuan languages:

There is little consensus on the internal classification of Wintuan languages due to the large number of dialects. Furthermore, the Wintu language is the only one to have been truly studied and documented. Little usable information on these languages is available to establish relationships between different dialects groups or the contours of these groups themselves. The classification proposed here is Mithun’s (1999) which is relatively widely accepted.

There is also a lack of consensus on whether or not the Wintuan languages should belong to a phylum (a group of several families of languages) called “Penutian” along with other families such as Chinookan, Tsimshian, Coos, Utian, etc. Some relationships within this phylum appear valid, but the exact contours of this “macro-family” remain uncertain. Here we follow the classification of Mithun (1999) who chooses to present this family independently, at least temporarily, although this classification is likely to change.

Are Wintuan languages in danger?

Yes, Ethnologue, which recognizes only one living language for the entire family, counts only 6 speakers. UNESCO, even more dramatically, recognizes only one native speaker for the northern branch and one for the southern branch. Nomlaki and South Patwin are already extinct. It is therefore likely that the entire family will disappear in the coming years, if it is not already extinct at the time of this publication.

Sources:

Mithun, Marianne The languages of Native North America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (1999).

Campbell, Lyle. American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (1997)

Site devoted to American Indian languages:

http://www.native-languages.org/