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Karuk
Spoken in:	Northwestern California, USA
Total speakers:	10 (1997), 335 (2000)
Language family:	Language isolate.
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	nai
ISO 639-3:	kyh
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Karuk or Karok is a moribund language of northwestern California, USA. It was the traditional language of the Karuk people, most of whom now speak English.

William Bright worked to record the Karuk language, and this caused a revival.

According to Census 2000, there are 55 people between the ages of 5 and 17 who can speak Karuk, including 10 with limited English proficiency.

Contents 1 Classification 2 Phonology 2.1 Vowels 2.2 Consonants 3 Grammar 4 Links 5 References

There have been proposals to include Karuk into the hypothetical Hokan phylum.

"The Karok language is not closely or obviously related to any other (in the area), but has been classified as a member of the northern group of Hokan languages, in a subgroup which includes Chimariko and the Shasta languages, spoken in the same general part of California as Karok itself." (Bright 1)

"The Karok, Yurok and Hupa formed the southern focus of the so-called North Pacific Coast Culture. While most of the information of this culture comes from studies of the Yuroks, there was a high degree of cultural uniformity among the three groups; neighbours on the same river highway, they visited each other's performances of the same festivals, intermarried and feuded over the same issues." (Drucker 176) As concerns the Karok, Yurok and Hupa cultures, in spite of the sameness of culture, the languages are not. The Karok language is not closely or obviously related to any other language.

	Front	Back
High	i (ĩ) iː	u uː
Mid	eː	oː
Low	a (ã) aː

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal or postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stops and affricate	p			t	tʃ	k	ʔ
Fricatives	β	f	θ	s	(ʃ)	x	h
Nasals	m			n
Flap				ɾ
Approximant					j

Karuk is a polysynthetic language known for its method of arranging old and new information: "...skilled Karuk speakers use separate words to communicate new, salient detail, or to underscore known detail; and they use affixes for background details so that a listener's attention is not diverted." ^[1]

Karuk Language Resources

Karok Linguistic Lineage

Efforts Under Way to Preserve Karuk Language

Karuk Songs

Article containing a section comparing Karuk and Estonian/Finnish languages.

Bright, William. The Karok Language. Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 1957.

Drucker, Philip. Cultures of the North Pacific Coast. San Francisco: Chandler, 1965.

1. ^ Silver, Shirley & Miller, Wick R., "American Indian Languages: Cultural and Social Contexts" (1997, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, pg. 41).