Maiduan languages

Pre-contact distribution of Maiduan languages

Maiduan (also Maidun, Pujunan) is a small endangered language family of northeastern California.

Family division

The Maiduan consists of 4 languages:

# Maidu (a.k.a. Maidu proper, Northeastern Maidu, Mountain Maidu)# Chico (a.k.a. Valley Maidu)# Konkow (a.k.a. Northwestern Maidu)# Nisenan (a.k.a. Southern Maidu)

The languages have similar phonologies (i.e. sound systems) but differ significantly in terms of grammar. They are not mutually intelligible, even though many works often refer to all of the speakers of these languages as Maidu. The Chico dialects are little known due to scanty documentation, so their precise genetic relationship to the other languages probably cannot be determined (Mithun 1999).

Chico is now extinct. The other languages are extremely endangered nearing extinction: Northeastern Maidu has 1 or 2 speakers, Konkow has 3-6 speakers, Nisenan has only 1 speaker (Hinton 1994, reported in Gordon 2005).

Genetic relations

Maiduan is often considered in various Penutian phylum proposals. It was one of the original members of California Penutian (the Penutian "core").

See also

* Maidu language
* Maidu

Bibliography

* Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
* Heizer, Robert F. (1966). Languages, territories, and names of California Indian tribes.
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.