Luiseño language
| Luiseño | |
|---|---|
| Cham'teela | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Southern California |
| Ethnicity | 2,500 Luiseño and Juaneño (2007) |
|
Native speakers
|
5 (2007) |
|
Uto-Aztecan
|
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | luis1253 |
 |
|
The Luiseño language is an Uto-Aztecan language of California spoken by the Luiseño, a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles (80 km) from the southern part of Los Angeles County, California, to the northern part of San Diego County, California, and inland 30 miles (48 km). The people are called "Luiseño" due to their proximity to the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia.
The language is highly endangered, but an active language revitalization project is underway, assisted by linguists from the University of California, Riverside. The Pechanga Indian Reservation offers classes for children, and in 2013, "the tribe .. began funding a graduate-level Cal State San Bernardino Luiseño class, one of the few for-credit university indigenous-language courses in the country."
As of 2012, a Luiseño video game for the Nintendo DS is being used to teach the language to young people.
The dialect spoken by the Juaneño people is extinct.
Luiseño is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
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Wikipedia