Nisenan
Nisenan was a Maiduan language once spoken in United States.
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Nisenan (or alternatively, Neeshenam, Nishinam, Pujuni, or Wapumni) is an extinct Maiduan language that was spoken by the Nisenan people of central California in the foothills of the Sierras, in the whole of the American, Bear and Yuba river drainages. As of 2011, there were no living native speakers of Nisenan.
There has recently been a small effort at language revival. Most notably the release of the "Nisenan Workbook" (three volumes so far) put out by Alan Wallace, which can be found at the California State Indian Museum in Sacramento and the Maidu Interpretive Center in Roseville.
As the Nisenan (like many of the Natives of central California) were not a unified nation but a collection of independent tribes which are grouped together primarily on linguistic similarity, there were many dialects to varying degrees of variation. This has led to some degree of inconsistency in the available linguistic data, primarily in regard to the phonemes.
From Wikipedia · Nisenan language · CC BY-SA 4.0
Words in Nisenan
| Meaning | Word | Romanization |
|---|---|---|
| woman | kyle | |
| name | ha* | |
| eye | hin* | |
| ear | bono* | |
| nose | kol* | |
| tongue | al* | |
| hand | ma* | |
| blood | sedey* | |
| bone | b3m* | |
| skin | po* | |
| breast | min* | |
| liver | kylla* | |
| water | mom | |
| fire | sa* | |
| sun | ok* | |
| star | molo* | |
| mountain | yaman* | |
| tree | Ca* | |
| leaf | bakkal* | |
| night | po* | |
| dog | sukku* | |
| fish | pala* | |
| louse | di* | |
| one | witte* | |
| two | pen* | |
| I | ni* | |
| you | mi* | |
| we | nes* | |
| drink | mo* | |
| see | bu* |
* in the simplified ASJP transcription
Most similar languages
Vocabulary
- Northeast MaiduMaiduan53% alike
- Northwest MaiduMaiduan38% alike
- FrenchIndo-European12% alike
- WintuWintuan11% alike
- BieriaAustronesian11% alike
- Klamath-ModocIsolates11% alike
Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.
Nearby languages
Elsewhere
Glottolog · nise1244 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · nsz