Native to United States | ||
Region Southwestern Washington Ethnicity 200 Cowlitz people (1990) Extinct maybe 2 speakers in 1990 Revival the 110 listed in 2010 census are not native speakers Language family Salishan
Coast
Tsamosan
Inland
Cowlitz | ||
The Cowlitz language is a member of the Tsamosan branch of the Coast Salish family of Salishan languages.
Contents
The Cowlitz people
The Cowlitz people were originally two distinct tribes: the Lower Cowlitz and the Upper Cowlitz. Only the Lower Cowlitz spoke Cowlitz; the Upper Cowlitz, a Sahaptin tribe, spoke a dialect of Yakama.
Vocabulary
Cowlitz is most similar to Lower Chehalis, another Tsamosan language, although it does contains some oddities, such as the word for one, utsus (in contrast to the Lower Chehalis paw).
References
Cowlitz language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA