Karuk language

There are only 5 vowels in Karuk, as shown by the chart, where a, i, and u have both long and short vowels, while e and o have only long vowels.[6]

Karuk only has 16 consonants, a small number compared to the relatively large consonant inventories of most California languages.[6] Karuk also does not show any secondary articulation to its consonants such as glottalization or labialization, also unusual for a Californian language.

When two high vowels are juxtaposed in a word, then the first vowel turns into a glide in the following examples.[12]

Note: Syllabification in these examples are from right-to-left.[12]

The following example is a more rare case in Karuk where the syllabification is from left-to-right.[12]

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."[15]^:41

Karuk is similar to many other American Indian Languages because "verbs bear a complex person-marking system, where subject and object are marked in portmanteau prefixes."[6] Depending on the subject and the object the speaker is referring to, there is a prefix for both positive and negative indicatives as well as a prefix for the potential mood. Through his research, William Bright found the language lacks words for cardinal directions, but uses suffixes on verbs to describe relevant direction. Many motion verbs have a singular and plural form. Through morphology, long-form vowels are used when a is next to i or u. Karuk uses accents where vowels can sound different in each word, making the language difficult to learn.[6] Although the structure may be similar, Karuk is considered to be much different than its neighboring languages, such as Yurok.[16]

Karuk uses prefixes and suffixes in a way William Bright relates to how English words snort, sniff, and sneeze all start with a sn-. The following are examples of prefixes in Karuk.[17]

Dr. William Bright started studying the Karuk language in 1949 in pursuit of his doctorate in linguistics at U.C Berkeley. Bright was met with open arms by tribal elders and was taken in and called Uhyanapatánvaanich, or "little word-asker" in Karuk.[18] A little under a decade later, Bright published The Karok Language (University of California), which was a highly informative piece on the Karuk language, its grammar, and syntax.[20] Bright worked with Susan Gehr, a tribe member and fellow linguist, on a Karuk dictionary, which was published in 2005.[20] Bright was a different type of linguist because he did not see language without cultural context. He would record everyday conversations, songs, stories, and poetry of fluent Karuk speakers to attempt to capture the language and what it meant to those speaking it.[20] He spent over fifty years studying, researching, and documenting Karuk, and is the only non-Indian to be inducted as an honorary member of the tribe thanks to his contributions to the community. Bright was buried on Karuk land when he died in 2006.[21]

In the late 1980s, Humboldt State University started the "American Indian Bilingual Teacher Credential Program", where they brought in teachers from four local tribes, the Hupa, Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa.[22] These teachers were bilingual in their tribe's native language as well as English, and would be employed in local public schools to teach American Indian children. The university developed this initiative to help local American Indian populations either further develop their English for higher education or develop their native language to preserve culture. Bilingual teachers in both Karuk and English would teach at Orleans and Happy Camp Elementary Schools, where children would learn how to live in America while keeping their identity.[22]

In 1990, attempts were made to revive the language by the Karuk Language Restoration Committee. This committee, composed of eight volunteers, drafted a 5-year minimum plan in an attempt to preserve the Karuk language and help it grow in the future.[23] The committee was also advised by Dr. William Bright and tribal member Julian Lang, a dedicated researcher of the language. Their studies showed that the decline of the language is caused by a combination of a lack of younger fluent speakers, a decline in the number of speakers, not being typically taught at home at young ages, a lack of flexibility preventing it from being modernized, and the inability of most tribal members to read the language.[23]

The committee ultimately created a five-step plan:[23]

1. Recording and writing down fluent speakers communicating in Karuk.
2. Training more people to become fluent as a long-term goal.
3. Teaching tribal members and local communities why learning the language is important to not just the language but also to the culture itself.
4. Reviewing and receiving community feedback regarding the current plan.
5. Facilitating the community participation in programs that have people practice and speak Karuk.

An immersion method called the master-apprentice program was started in 1992 by Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival to aid in Karuk revitalization efforts.[21] In order to fully immerse a beginning speaker in Karuk, people who are interested in learning the language are paired with a fluent native speaker who they follow throughout the day. During this time spent with the native speaker, learners are only allowed to speak Karuk. The program is intensive, typically lasting 40 hours a week for 3 years.[21] Around 20 groups had successfully gone through the entire program as of the year 2011.[21]