| Upper Chinook | |
|---|---|
| Kiksht | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Columbia River |
| Extinct | 11 July 2012, with the death of Gladys Thompson[1] |
| Revival | 270 (2009-2013)[2] |
Chinookan
| |
| Dialects |
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wac |
| Glottolog | wasc1239 |
| ELP | Wasco-Wishram |
Upper Chinook, endonymKiksht,[3] also known asColumbia Chinook, andWasco-Wishram after its last surviving dialect, is a recently extinct language of the USPacific Northwest. It had 69 speakers in 1990, of whom 7 were monolingual: five Wasco[4] and two Wishram. In 2001, there were five remaining speakers of Wasco.[5]
The last fully fluent speaker of Kiksht, Gladys Thompson, died in July 2012.[1] She had been honored for her work by the Oregon Legislature in 2007.[6][7][8]Two new speakers were teaching Kiksht at theWarm Springs Indian Reservation in 2006.[9] The Northwest Indian Language Institute of theUniversity of Oregon formed a partnership to teach Kiksht andNumu in the Warm Springs schools.[10][11]Audio and video files of Kiksht are available at the Endangered Languages Archive.[12]
The last fluent speaker of the Wasco-Wishram dialect was Madeline Brunoe McInturff, and she died on 11 July 2006 at the age of 91.[13]
Kathlamet has been classified as an additional dialect; it was notmutually intelligible.
Vowels in Kiksht are as follows: /u a i ɛ ə/.
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