Upper Chinook language

Upper Chinook, endonym Kiksht,^[3] also known as Columbia Chinook, and Wasco-Wishram after its last surviving dialect, is a recently extinct language of the US Pacific Northwest. It had 69 speakers in 1990, of whom 7 were monolingual: five Wasco^[4] and two Wishram. In 2001, there were five remaining speakers of Wasco.^[5]

Upper Chinook
Kiksht
Native to	United States
Region	Columbia River
Extinct	11 July 2012, with the death of Gladys Thompson[1]
Revival	270 (2009-2013)[2]
Language family	Chinookan Upper Chinook
Dialects	Multnomah Kiksht (Kathlamet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wac
Glottolog	wasc1239
ELP	Wasco-Wishram

The last fully fluent speaker of Kiksht, Gladys Thompson, died in July 2012.^[1] She had been honored for her work by the Oregon Legislature in 2007.^[6][7][8] Two new speakers were teaching Kiksht at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in 2006.^[9] The Northwest Indian Language Institute of the University of Oregon formed a partnership to teach Kiksht and Numu in the Warm Springs schools.^[10][11] Audio and video files of Kiksht are available at the Endangered Languages Archive.^[12]

The last fluent speaker of the Wasco-Wishram dialect was Madeline Brunoe McInturff, and she died on 11 July 2006 at the age of 91.^[13]

Dialects

• Multnomah, once spoken on Sauvie Island and in the Portland area in northwestern Oregon
• Kiksht
  • Watlala or Watlalla, also known as Cascades, now extinct (two groups, one on each side of the Columbia River; the Oregon group were called Gahlawaihih [Curtis]).
  • Hood River, now extinct (spoken by the Hood River Band of the Hood River Wasco in Oregon, also known as Ninuhltidih [Curtis] or Kwikwulit [Mooney])
  • White Salmon, now extinct (spoken by the White Salmon River Band of Wishram in Washington)
  • Wasco-Wishram (the Wishram lived north of the Columbia River in Washington and the kin Wasco lived south of the same river in Oregon)
  • Clackamas, now extinct, was spoken in northwestern Oregon along the Clackamas and Sandy rivers.

Kathlamet has been classified as an additional dialect; it was not mutually intelligible.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar			Palatal	Velar		Uvular		Glottal
			plain	sibilant	lateral		plain	labial	plain	labial
Nasal		m	n
Plosive/ Affricate	plain	p	t	ts	tɬ	tʃ	k	kʷ	q	qʷ	ʔ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ	tsʼ	tɬʼ	tʃʼ	kʼ	kʷʼ	qʼ	qʷʼ
	voiced	b	d				ɡ	ɡʷ
Continuant	voiceless			s	ɬ	ʃ	x	xʷ	χ	χʷ	h
	voiced	w			l	j	ɣ	ɣʷ

Vowels in Kiksht are as follows: /u a i ɛ ə/.