Ethnicity Karuk Revival 30 L2 speakers (2007) ISO 639-3 kyh | Native speakers 12 (2007) | |
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Karuk or Karok is an endangered language of northwestern California. It is the traditional language of the Karuk people, most of whom now speak English. The name is derived from the word Káruk, which means 'upriver'.
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Use
Linguist William Bright documented the Karuk language and produced a grammar of it in 1957. When Bright began his studies in 1949 there were "a couple of hundred fluent speakers," but by 2011, there were fewer than a dozen fluent elders. A standardized system for writing the languages was adopted in the 1980s.
Classification
Karuk is a language isolate, sharing few if any similarities with other nearby languages. Historically, the American linguist Edward Sapir proposed it be classified as part of the Hokan family he hypothesized although little evidence supports this proposal. As Bright wrote, "The Karok language is not closely or obviously related to any other (in the area), but has been classified as a member of the northern group of Hokan languages, in a subgroup which includes Chimariko and the Shasta languages, spoken in the same general part of California as Karok itself."
Grammar
Karuk is a polysynthetic language known for its method of arranging old and new information: "... skilled Karuk speakers use separate words to communicate new, salient detail, or to underscore known detail; and they use affixes for background details so that a listener's attention is not diverted."