Kumeyaay language

Kumeyaay
Southern Diegueño
Native to United States, Mexico
Region California, Baja California
Ethnicity Kumeyaay
Native speakers
 500 in Mexico (2020 census)
40–50 in the United States (2007)
Yuman
  • Core Yuman
    • Delta–California
      • Kumeyaay
Dialects
  • Kwatl
Language codes
ISO 639-3 dih (as part of Diegueño)
Glottolog kumi1248  Tipai
kwat1246  Kwatl
ELP Kumeyaay

Kumeyaay (Kumiai), also known as Central Diegueño, Kamia, 'Iipay Aa, and Campo, is the Native American language spoken by the Kumeyaay people of southern San Diego and Imperial counties in California as well as five Kumiai communities in Baja California Norte, MX.

Hinton in 1994 suggested a conservative estimate of 50 native speakers of Kumeyaay. A more liberal estimate (including speakers of 'Iipay and Tiipay), supported by the results of the Census 2000, is 110 people in the US, including 15 persons under the age of 18. There were 377 speakers reported in the 2010 Mexican census, including 88 who called their language "Cochimi".

Kumeyaay belongs to the Yuman language family and to the Delta–California branch of that family. Kumeyaay and its neighbors, 'Iipay to the north and Tiipay to the south, were often considered to be dialects of a single Diegueño language, but the 1990 consensus among linguists seems to be that at least three distinct languages are present within the dialect chain.

Confusingly, Kumeyaay is commonly used as a designation both for the central language of this family and for the 'Iipay-Tiipay-Kumeyaay people as a whole. Tiipay is also commonly used as a collective designation for speakers of both Kumeyaay and Tiipay proper.

Documentation

In 1999, published documentation for the Kumeyaay language appeared to be limited to a few texts. In 2019 Margaret Field et al. published a trilingual book of stories and oral histories from Baja California Tiipay communities of Nejí and La Huerta.

Video and audio recordings of stories, conversation, and wordlists in the Tiipay variants spoken in Nejí and La Huerta have been uploaded to the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA). Some of these have been transcribed and are available to download on the Endangered Languages Archive hosted by the Endangered Languages Documentation Program (ELDP) at the University of London.

As of April 2023, classes are available through Kumeyaay Community College paired with Cuyamaca Community College as well as San Diego State University. There is also a Kumeyaay language immersion program.

Phonology

Consonants

Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
nor. lab.
Stop/Affricate p t̪ t tʃ k kʷ q ʔ
Fricative β s̪ s x xʷ
Nasal m n̪ n ɲ
Trill r̪ r
Lateral fricative ɬ ʎ̝̊
approx. l ʎ
Approximant w j

Alveolar sounds /t, s, n, r/ can also be heard as post-alveolar [t̠, s̠, n̠, r̠].

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid ə o
Open a

Vowel length may also be distributed.