Ja’a Kumiai

Abstract

Kumiai (Kumeyaay, formerly known as Diegueño; ISO code: DIH) is an endangered Yuman language of the Delta-California subgroup spoken across the Mexico–US border by approximately 150 people (Golla 2011). There are two major sets of Kumiai varieties: Northern Kumiai (Ipai/’Iipay) and Southern Kumiai (Tipai/Tiipay) (Golla 2011). A third cluster of varieties, located in southeastern San Diego County, is proposed in Langdon (1991) and Miller (2001). The speech illustrated below is representative of Ja’a, a Southern Kumiai dialect spoken in Juntas de Nejí, Baja California, Mexico (see Figure 1 below). There are currently only four fluent speakers of Ja’a Kumiai (Miller 2016b). Recordings were made over a six-month period with a 48-year-old female speaker born and raised in Juntas de Nejí. Quantitative data reported in this paper are taken from a subset of the current corpus, from recordings made with the speaker in a soundproof booth. Only the speech of this single speaker is reported here given the severe endangerment of the language.