Tillamook language

Tillamook is an extinct Salishan language, formerly spoken by the Tillamook people in northwestern Oregon, United States. The last fluent speaker was Minnie Scovell who died in 1972.^[1] In an effort to prevent the language from being lost, a group of researchers from the University of Hawaii interviewed the few remaining Tillamook speakers and created a 120-page dictionary.^[3]

Tillamook
Hutyáyu, Hutyéyu
Native to	United States
Region	Northwestern Oregon
Ethnicity	Tillamook, Siletz
Extinct	1972, with the death of Minnie Scovell[1]
Language family	Salishan Coast Salish Tillamook
Dialects	Tillamook Siletz
Language codes
ISO 639-3	til
Glottolog	till1254
Tillamook is classified as Extinct by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger [2]
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Phonology

Vowels

Vowels in Tillamook

	Front	Back
High	i	ə
Low	æ	ɑ

Consonants

Consonants in Tillamook

		Alveolar			Post- alveolar	Velar		Uvular		Glottal
		central	sibilant	lateral		unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Stop	plain	t	t͡s		t͡ʃ	k	kᵓ	q	qᵓ	ʔ
	ejective	tʼ	t͡sʼ	t͡ɬʼ	t͡ʃʼ	kʼ	kᵓʼ	qʼ	qᵓʼ
Fricative			s	ɬ	ʃ	x	xᵓ	χ	χᵓ	h
Sonorant		n		l	j		ɰᵓ

Internal rounding

The so-called "rounded" consonants (traditionally marked with the diacritic ⟨ʷ⟩, but here indicated with ⟨ᵓ⟩), including rounded vowels and ⟨w⟩ (/ɰᵓ/), are not actually labialized. The acoustic effect of labialization is created entirely inside the mouth by cupping the tongue (sulcalization). Uvulars with this distinctive internal rounding have "a kind of ɔ timbre" while "rounded" front velars have ɯ coloring. These contrast and oppose otherwise very similar segments having ɛ or ɪ coloring—the "unrounded" consonants.

/w/ is also formed with this internal rounding instead of true labialization, making it akin to [ɰ]. So are vowel sounds formerly written as /o/ or /u/, which are best characterized as the diphthong /əɰ/ with increasing internal rounding.^[4]