Kawaiisu

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A Native American language historically spoken by the Kawaiisu people in southern California; also refers to the ethnic group associated with this language known for their cultural heritage and traditions
2. The indigenous tongue once used by the Kawaiisu tribe living in the southern regions of California; the term also identifies the community of native speakers and their distinct cultural identity
3. A traditional linguistic system of the Kawaiisu, an indigenous group from southern California, representing both the unique language and the people who maintain the cultural practices tied to it

Etymology: The Kawaiisu language belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family, which also includes Shoshone, Hopi, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. That distant link is one of the more striking facts about it: a people whose homeland lay in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Mojave Desert edge of southern California spoke a tongue related to those of the Great Basin and of central Mexico. The name itself is an exonym, a term coined by outsiders rather than the speakers. Kawaiisu people more often referred to themselves by terms tied to their own communities and places, and the label now used for both the language and the people was adopted in English-language scholarship. Because of this, "Kawaiisu" tends to be used both for the language and for the community of its speakers, which is why the same word covers a tongue and a cultural identity. Few people speak the language today. Its last fluent speakers were elderly by the late twentieth century, and documentation work by linguists has been central to preserving what remains.