Re: A Vocabulary or Phrasebook of the Mutsun Language, spoken at the Mission San Juan Bautista

On 6/10/05, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

>
> Is it still alive?
>
Ethnologue says it died out by 1950, but a major source of words and
phrases is actually the book resource I posted.

if you go to www.mutsunlanguage.com there's a small bit of info (even
a phonology) which is interesting reading.



> But ay de mí, a hopelessly Latinate grammar-- to the point, I suspect, of
> completely disguising and probably misinterpreting the language!! If it's
> the only grammar of the lang. ever written, I suppose we have to say it's
> better than nothing. Gutenberg's format in this case is a little annoying,
> you have to start at page 1 and go on page by page; no way to skip around
> (that I could figure out), no table of contents, etc. I realize it's a
> _copy_ of the original, of course.
>
True, but i suspect we'd need to look at related languages that may be
surviving to see what the true grammar is. At least from what is
written there seems to be a case system similar to Latin's.


> I got about 10 pages into it before resigning...never did find any key to
> the pronunciation. Or a wordlist.
>
One would need to go through it and really take a good look and
compile something. Here's some more resources:

Mutsun Language Published Resources

Vocabulary or Phrase Book of the Mutsun Language of Alta California -
By the Rev. F. Felipe Arroyo De La Cuesta

Grammar of the Mutsun Language Spoken at the Mission of San Juan
Bautista, Alta California - By Father Felipe Arroyo De La Cuesta

Anthropological Records 15:1 California Indian Linguistic Records, the
Mission Indian Vocabularies of Alphonse Pinart - Edited by R. F.
Heizer

The Mutsun Dialect of Costanoan Based on the Vocabulary of De La
Cuesta - By J. A. Mason

If you can get ahold of what J.A. Mason and Alphonse Pinart wrote,
they're probably better.


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