| Molala | |
|---|---|
| Molalla | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Cascade Mountains ofOregon |
| Ethnicity | Molala people |
| Extinct | 1958, with the death of Fred Yelkes (1885–1958)[1] |
Penutian?
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mbe |
| Glottolog | mola1238 |
 Molala is classified as Extinct by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger. [2] | |
Molala is an extinct language once spoken by theMolala people ofOregon. Currently it is included among thePlateau Penutianlanguage family, withKlamath andSahaptin being considered the closest related.[3][4]
The first written vocabulary of the Molala language was published byHoratio Hale in 1846. As a member of theUnited States Exploring Expedition, he had visited thePacific Northwest in 1841. MissionaryMarcus Whitman was credited for providing "much valuable information" about theCayuse people and other natives nearbyWaiilatpu.[5] Hale also recorded aCayuse language vocabulary with Whitman's assistance. In hisWaiilatpuan language family, Hale put Cayuse and Molala as the sole members.[6]
In 1910 or 1911, Stephens Savage, a Molala speaker, had toldLeo Frachtenberg that the following five words were identical in both Cayuse and Molala:[7]
| sorrel horse | qasqasi tasiwitkwi |
| spotted horse | yuꞏk tasiwitkwi |
| black horse | múkimuki tasiwitkwi |
| comb | taꞏsps |
| spoon | ƚúꞏpinc |
In 1929Edward Sapir grouped Cayuse with Molala as part of theWaiilatpuan branch of thePlateau Penutian languages.[8]
Bruce Rigsby reexamined the Cayuse-Molala lexical pairs provided by Hale and found only a tenth to be potentially related terms. Whitman was credited as the origin of the Waiilatpuan linguistic family. Upon his review of extant Molala and Cayuse linguistic data, Rigsby concluded "I do not see how the two languages could have possibly been mutually intelligible."[9]
There were three known dialects:
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Lateral | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | plain | p | t | k | q | ʔ | ||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | qʰ | ||||
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | kʼ | qʼ | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||
| Affricate | plain | ts | tɬ | |||||
| ejective | tsʼ | |||||||
| Fricative | ɸ | s | ɬ | x | h | |||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||||
| Short | Long | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i | iː |
| Open | a~e | aː |
| Back | u | uː |
/i/ and /a/ can also shift to[ə].[10]
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This is an (unofficial) Salish-based orthography for the Molala language:
| a | aa | c | c̓ | e | f | h | i | ii | k | kʰ | k̓ | l | ɬ | ƛ | m | n | ŋ | p | pʰ | p̓ | q | qʰ | q̓ | s | t | tʰ | t̓ | u | uu | w | x | y | ʔ |
| a | aː | ts | tsʼ | e~ə | ɸ | h | i | iː | k | kʰ | k’ | l | ɬ | tɬ | m | n | ŋ | p | pʰ | p’ | q | qʰ | q’ | s | t | tʰ | t’ | u | uː | w | x | y | ʔ |
Molala is a verb-heavypolysynthetic language.
Molala nouns have seven cases:
Italics indicate extinct languages | |||||||||||||||||||||
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