Alsea language

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Alsea
Alsea–Yaquina, Yakonan, Alséya
Native to	Alsea people, Yaquina people
Extinct	1951, with the death of John Albert[1]
Language family	Coast Oregon Penutian ? Alsea
Dialects	Alsea Yaquina
Language codes
ISO 639-3	aes
Linguist List	aes
Glottolog	alse1251
Pre-contact distribution of Alsean
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Alsea /ˈælsiː/ or Alsean (also Yakonan) and Yaquina were two closely related speech varieties spoken along the central Oregon coast until the early 1950s.^[2] They are sometimes taken to be different languages, but it is difficult to be sure given the poor state of attestation; Mithun believes they were probably dialects of a single language.^[3] They are commonly held to be components of a language isolate.^[4]

Alsea is usually considered to belong to the

Both are now extinct.

The name Alsea derives from the

The name Yaquina derives from the Alsean name for the Yaquina Bay and the Yaquina River region, yuqú·na. Yaquina was last recorded in 1884 by James Owen Dorsey.

Alsea had 34 consonants:^[3]

/ɕ/, /tɕ/ and /tɕ’/ are spelled as s, c and c̓ in modern descriptions.^[3][7] Their phonetic value has been described as "palatal",^[8] or "between alveolar and palatal".^[3]

Three vowels are listed as /a, i, u/. Long vowel variants of /i, u/ are [eː, oː]. A mid vowel /ə/ occurs as a phonetically inserted vowel sound.^[7]