Wichita language
| Wichita | |
|---|---|
| Native to | United States |
| Region | West-central Oklahoma |
| Ethnicity | 2,100 Wichita people (2007) |
| Extinct | 2016 with the death of Doris McLemore. |
| Revival | 4 conversant |
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Caddoan
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | wich1260 |
| Linguasphere | 64-BAC > 64-BAC-a |
Distribution of Native American languages in Oklahoma
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Wichita is an extinct Caddoan language once spoken in Oklahoma by the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. The last fluent heritage speaker, Doris Lamar-McLemore, died in 2016, although in 2007 there were three first-language speakers alive. This has rendered Wichita functionally extinct; however, the tribe offers classes to revitalize the language and works in partnership with Wichita Documentation Project of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
When the Europeans began to settle North America, Wichita separated into three dialects; Waco, Tawakoni, and KirikirɁi:s (aka, Wichita Proper). However, when the language was threatened and the number of speakers decreased, dialect differences largely disappeared
As late as 2007 there were three living native speakers, but the last known fluent native speaker, Doris Lamar-McLemore, died on 30 August 2016. This is a sharp decline from the 500 speakers estimated by Paul L. Garvin in 1950.
Wichita is a member of the Caddoan language family, along with modern Caddo, Pawnee, Arikara, and Kitsai.
The phonology of Wichita is unusual, with no pure labial consonants (though there are two labiovelars /kʷ/ and /w/. There is only one nasal (depending on conflicting theory one or more nasal sounds may appear, but all theories seem to agree that they are allophones of the same phoneme, at best), and possibly a three vowel system using only height for contrast.
Wichita has 10 consonants. In the Americanist orthography generally used when describing Wichita, /t͜s/ is spelled ⟨c⟩, and /j/ is ⟨y⟩.
Though neither Rood nor Garvin include nasals in their respective consonant charts for Wichita, Rood’s later inclusion of nasals in phonetic transcription for his 2008 paper (“Some Wichita Recollections: Aspects of Culture Reflected in Language”) support the appearance of at least /n/.
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Wikipedia