Cruzeño language

Cruzeño
Isleño Island Chumash
Native to	California, United States
Region	Santa Cruz Island, Santa Rosa Island
Ethnicity	Island Chumash
Extinct	June 19, 1915, with the death of Fernando Librado
Language family	Chumashan Southern Cruzeño
Dialects	Cruzeño Roseño
Language codes
ISO 639-3	crz
Linguist List	crz
Glottolog	cruz1243
Cruzeño
Island Chumash is classified as Extinct by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Cruzeño, also known as Isleño (Ysleño) or Island Chumash, is one of the extinct Chumashan languages spoken along the coastal areas of Southern California. It shows evidence of mixing between a core Chumashan language such as Barbareño or Ventureño and an indigenous language of the Channel Islands. The latter was presumably spoken on the islands since the end of the last ice age separated them from the mainland; Chumash would have been introduced in the first millennium after the introduction of plank canoes on the mainland. Evidence of the substratum language is retained in a noticeably non-Chumash phonology, and basic non-Chumash words such as those for 'water' and 'house'.

References

• Heizer R. F., ed. 1952. California Indian linguistic records: The Mission Indian vocabularies of Alphonse Pinart. University of California Anthropological Records 15:1-84.
• Heizer R. F., ed. 1952. California Indian linguistic records: The Mission Indian vocabularies of H.W. Henshaw. University of California Anthropological Records 15:85-202.

External links

• Island Chumash language — overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• Berkeley.edu; California Language Archive: Island Chumash language
• Language-archives.org: OLAC resources about the Cruzeño language