This page describes the contents of a web implementation of an interim Kashaya dictionary, or lexicon. It was created by Eugene Buckley with assistance from a variety of people, especially student researchers John Gluckman (UCLA) and Kobey Shwayder (Penn). The effort was first supported by a grant from the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation, and at present by the National Endowment for the Humanities, through the Documenting Endangered Languages program.

The information contained in this lexicon was mainly collected by Robert Oswalt starting in the late 1950's. Since he did not complete the intended dictionary before his death in 2007, I undertook the work of converting his text files to a database, organizing and developing links among the entries, and expanding entries that did not have clear definitions or examples of use. The work is still very much in progress, but this web version is provided so that members of the tribe can make use of it despite its current limitations, as well as give feedback to improve future versions.

The buttons at the top right corner of each page have the following functions:

• About leads to this description of the dictionary.
  • to review this information while looking at entries.
• Lexicon displays pages of Kashaya entries, organized by initial letter of the pronunciation.
  • mainly useful for browsing the Kashaya words.
• English-Kashaya displays a list of English translations on the left, and the Kashaya lexicon on the right, both organized by initial letter.
  • probably the most useful view.
  • the English index was generated automatically based on the first word in the definition, but that is not always very useful; this will be improved over time.
• Categories shows a list of semantic categories according to word meanings.
  • this information has just begun to be added to entries, so not many categories are shown so far.

The Kashaya entries contain a lot of complex information. The main things to keep in mind are summarized here, using the entry for biʔtʼa₂ as an example.

Here are the main parts of the entry.

The main entry here is followed by an indented subentry for biʔtʼaw, a use of the Absolutive form of the verb as an Adverb that means "almost" (that is, reaching toward but not quite getting there). One of the examples shown in the main entry ("almost a hundred") actually belongs with this meaning, and will have to be moved.

The Kashaya alphabet

Because the sounds of Kashaya are very different from those of English, we need to use special symbols to make the right pronunciation clear. Although these are unfamiliar to most people, they were adopted by Robert Oswalt following the lead of most linguists who have studied the native languages of North America. It is entirely possible to develop a practical orthography that is more like English, but for now the dictionary uses Oswalt's symbols.

The vowels a i e o u are pronounced as in languages like Spanish, not as they sometimes are in English (which has much more erratic spellings of vowels). There are no silent vowels in Kashaya.

All the vowels can be short or long. When accompanied by a raised dot, a· i· e· o· u·, the vowel should be dragged out. It's a bit like the difference between English bid and bead, or took and spook, but the difference is mainly how long you say the vowel rather than the way your tongue and lips are positioned, which is the case in English.

Some consonants are similar enough to English that we don't need to discuss them in detail:

b d f h l m n r s w y

The spelling š is not used in English but the sound is: this is what we write as sh. Since it is a single sound, not two in a row, linguists usually choose a single letter to represent it, rather than a "digraph" (two letters interpreted as one sound). The same is true for c, a single letter used to write what in English is ch.

The letter ʔ is like a question mark without the dot underneath, but represents a specific sound that often occurs also in English, called a glottal stop. This is common when English speakers say a word like uh-oh; the little "catch" in the throat before the oh is basically the same as in the Kashaya word hoʔo, which means "tooth". Every word of Kashaya that seems to start with a vowel actually starts with this sound, so the most accurate spelling includes this symbol. Thus the word for "I" sounds like ah, but because it has the glottal stop at the beginning, it's written ʔa. In English we usually pronounce words like ah with a glottal stop anyway, so that should be pretty easy to say.

Now we come to some special sounds of Kashaya. Consonants that involve completely stopping the flow of air are called stops. We have these in English in sounds like p t k. Kashaya has lots of these sounds, and some special distinctions among them. Here they all are at once, and then some, with the technical terms used to describe them.

First let's consider the rows in this table, which differ by what linguistics call Place of Articulation. The consonants in the series written p c k are pronounced at the same place in the mouth as English p ch k, but the others require special comment.

There are two kinds of t-sounds, written plain t and ṭ with a dot underneath. This is an important distinction in Kashaya; the closest comparison to English is that plain t, pronounced with the front part of the tongue up against the back of the teeth, is somewhat like our sound th, except that it is a stop like t (cutting off the airflow) rather than a fricative like th (which allows the air to continue to flow during the consonant). The dotted ṭ is more like a regular t in English, with the tip of the tongue touching the top of the mouth a bit behind the teeth. These are best learned by listening to a native speaker and practicing.

The remaining special letter is q which is a "uvular" stop. The uvula is the little thing dangling down in the back of the throat, and this consonant is made by raising the very back of the tongue up to the area of the uvular to make a closure. It's like k but further back, which makes a distinctive sound. Again, it's best to listen to a native speaker to get the hang of it.

Now let's look at the three columns in the table, using p as an example. The plain p is similar to English p but without a puff of air (called "aspiration") after it as in English pin; it's more like spin, where it doesn't have that aspiration. But when we write the raised h as in pʰ, then there is a strong puff of air, like pin but even more strongly aspirated. These are different sounds in Kashaya, so it's important to pay attention to this little ʰ in order to get the right pronunciation. This is true for all the different places of articulation (every row).

Finally, the "ejectives" in the last column, such as pʼ, are very distinctive sounds found in a lot of Native languages from California to the Northwest (and elsewhere). They're formed by building up significant air pressure in the mouth (while raising the larynx) before releasing the stop, which gives them a kind of popping sound. These are also best learned with a speaker.

The last sound we haven't discussed is sʼ, which is an ejective version of s. It often sounds like ts but also with the same popping sound when it's released.

A final word about alphabetical ordering. The usual order of the English alphabet is followed, with the modified letters š and ṭ right after plain s and t. For consonants that can be aspirated or ejective, those occur in that order after the plain letter; so, for example, one chunk of the alphabet is ordered s sʼ š t tʰ tʼ ṭ ṭʰ ṭʼ. Currently, the letters with two components, such as tʰ, are not given separate pages in the lexicon, but are listed under the main letter. Some letters, such as g and z, are not used in Kashaya so they don't occur in the list. The letters f and r occur in borrowed words (mostly from Spanish) and so they are in the list; v is in just one (obsolete) borrowed word.

The glottal stop comes at the end, after y. As mentioned above, words that seem to start with a vowel really have ʔ at the beginning, so you have to look for them there. The only reason the vowels a e i u occur in the list of lexicon pages is that some suffixes do start with a vowel (but always end up preceded by a consonant in the full word). There are no suffixes in Kashaya that start with o, so that letter isn't in the list.

Two special symbols come at the very end, Ø and · (the length mark). These have to do with certain suffixes, prefixes, or interjections, so you can usually ignore them. In addition, x occurs in the list because it's a way of pronouncing a certain "mimetic", or a word that imitates the sound that something makes (like grr or boom); it doesn't represent ks as in English but rather a guttural sound like German ch (as in Bach) or Spanish j (as in jota or reloj). The modified x̣ is similar but further back in the mouth, where q is pronounced.