Tübatulabal language
| Tübatulabal | |
|---|---|
| Pakaːnil | |
| Region | Kern River, California, United States |
| Ethnicity | 900 Tübatulabal (2007) |
|
Native speakers
|
5 (2007) |
|
Uto-Aztecan
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | tuba1278 |
Tübatulabal /təˈbɑːtələbɑːl/ is a Uto-Aztecan language, traditionally spoken in Kern County, California, United States. It is the traditional language of the Tübatulabal people, who have now largely shifted to English. The language originally had three main dialects: Bakalanchi, Pakanapul and Palegawan. The language is critically endangered, but there are ongoing revitalization efforts of the Pakanapul dialect.
In English, the name Tübatulabal refers to both the Tübatulabal people and their language. However, in the language itself, the term Tübatulabal refers only to the Tübatulabal people. Its origin is unclear, but it may be related to the noun stem tɨba- "pine nuts". The Tübatulabal term for the Tübatulabal language is pakaːnil.
Vowels
There are six phonemic vowels in Tübatulabal:
Contrastive short and long versions of each vowel are found in both stressed and unstressed syllables. The vowels have various allophones which occur in different environments, most notably more central lax allophones when the vowels are short and occur in unstressed syllables. i and u can occur as the second member of a diphthong with any other vowel, resulting in ten possible diphthongs (Voegelin reports that ɨu is rare). Phonologically, the members of a diphthong are treated as distinct segments. For example, the common initial reduplication process, which copies the first stem vowel, copies only the first member of a diphthong, e.g.:
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