Mutsun (also known asSan Juan Bautista Costanoan) is aUtian language spoken in Northern California. It was the primary language of a division of theOhlone people living in theMission San Juan Bautista area. It initially went extinct in 1930 when the last speaker died, Ascencion Solórzano de Cervantes. TheTamien Nation andAmah Mutsun [Wikidata] band is currently working to restore the use of the language, using a modern alphabet.[2][3][4]
Maria Ascención Solórsano de Garcia y de Cervantes, the last known fluent speaker of Mutsun, amassed large amounts of language and cultural data specific to the Mutsun.[3] TheSpanishFranciscanmissionary andlinguistFelipe Arroyo de la Cuesta wrote extensively about the language's grammar, and linguistJohn Peabody Harrington made very extensive notes on the language from Solórsano. Harrington's field notes formed the basis of the grammar of Mutsun written byMarc Okrand as aUniversity of California dissertation in 1977[1] which to this day remains the only grammar[citation needed] ever written of anyCostanoan language. Scholars from the U.S., Germany, and the Netherlands have discussed methods that could facilitate the revitalization of Mutsun.[5]
Vowel and consonant phonemes are represented here with the descriptions and orthography of the English–Mutsun dictionary,[6] with additions from an earlier paper by Warner, Butler, and Luna-Costillas.[7]
Unlike many Latin-script alphabets, Mutsun uses capital letters as separate sounds.[9] The following alphabet is based on the alphabetization of the Mutsun-English dictionary and includes an example word.[10]
Okrand, Marc (1977).Mutsun Grammar (Ph.D. dissertation). Berkeley: University of California.
Warner, N. (2006). "Making a Dictionary for Community Use in Language Revitalization: The Case of Mutsun".International Journal of Lexicography.19 (3):257–285.doi:10.1093/ijl/ecl014.
Warner, Natasha; Butler, Lynnika; Geary, Quirina (February 20, 2016).mutsun-inkiS inkiS-mutsun riica pappel [Mutsun-English English-Mutsun Dictionary]. University of Hawai'i Press.hdl:10125/24679.ISBN978-0-9856211-8-6.
Warner, Natasha; Butler, Lynnika; Luna-Costillas, Quirina (September 2006). "Making a Dictionary for Community Use in Language Revitalization: The Case of Mutsun".International Journal of Lexicography.19 (3):257–285.doi:10.1093/ijl/ecl014.
Warner, Natasha; Luna, Quirina; Butler, Lynnika; van Volkinburg, Heather (July 2009). "Revitalization in a scattered language community: problems and methods from the perspective of Mutsun language revitalization".International Journal of the Sociology of Language (198):135–148.doi:10.1515/IJSL.2009.031.hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0012-CC69-A.ISSN0165-2516.
Teixeira, Lauren S. (1997).The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area—A Research Guide. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press.ISBN9780879191405.
