Wappo was spoken in the Alexander and Napa valleys of northern California, the lone survivor of the small Yuki-Wappo grouping. For a California language it carried an unusually full grammar — seven cases, and a split that let non-human nouns stay uninflected for plural where human ones did not.
Laura Fish Somersal, born into it, spent decades working with the linguists Jesse Sawyer, Sandra Thompson, and Charles Li, recording everything she could remember — work that became the UCSB-published A Reference Grammar of Wappo (2006). When she died on 30 July 1990 the language had no fluent speakers left. Classes drawing on her recordings began in 2012; everyone in them learns it as a second language.
Worth remembering
- For a California language it had an unusually rich grammar, with seven cases.
- It distinguished human from non-human nouns for number, leaving non-human nouns uninflected even when plural — a typologically rare pattern.
Gallery
Sources
- Wappo, of the Yuki-Wappo family, had a seven-case grammar; its last fluent speaker, Laura Fish Somersal, died on 30 July 1990 Wikipedia
- Wappo is classified as extinct, with revitalisation classes begun in 2012 and no fluent L1 speakers Glottolog
- UCSB linguists Sandra Thompson and Charles Li, working with Laura Fish Somersal from 1975 until her death in 1990, published A Reference Grammar of Wappo (2006) — described as the most extensive grammatical documentation ever conducted on the language. UC Santa Barbara
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.