Cupeño language

Cupeño
Region	Southern California, USA
Extinct	1987
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Northern Takic Cupan Cahuilla–Cupeno Cupeño
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cup
ELP	Cupeño

Cupeño is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, formerly spoken by the Cupeño people of Southern California, USA, who now speak English. Roscinda Nolasquez was the last native speaker of Cupeño.

Morphology

Cupeño is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i, i:		u, u:
Mid	ɛ, ɛ:	ə, ə:	o, o:
Low		a, a:

/ɛ/ and /o/ appear largely in Spanish loanwords, but also as allophones of /ə/ in native Cupeño words.

/i/ can also be realized as [ɪ] in closed syllables, and [e] in some open syllables.

/u/ may reduce to schwa in unstressed syllables.

/ə/ also appears as [ɨ:] when long and stressed, [o] after labials and [q], and as [ɛ] before [w].

/a/ is also realized as [ɑ] before uvulars.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Coronal		Palatal or Postalveolar	Plain		Labialized		Glottal
			Laminal	Apical		Velar	Uvular	Velar	Uvular
Nasal		m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive and Affricate		p	t		(t)ʃ	k	q	kʷ (qʷ)		ʔ
Fricative	Voiceless		s	ʂ		x ~ χ		xʷ		h
	Voiced	v	ð			ɣ
Trill				ɾ
Approximant	central				j			w
	lateral		l		ʎ

/kʷ/ is realized as [qʷ] before unstressed /a/ or /e/. [x] and [χ] appear to be in free variation.

/tʃ/ is realized as [ʃ] in syllable codas.

/f/, /ð/, and /ɾ/ appear only in Spanish loanwords.

See also

• Survey of California and Other Indian Languages

External links

• The Cupeño language, Four Directions Institute
• Status of Cupeño language, Ethnologue
• Cupeño language, UC Berkeley