Hopi language
Hopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people of northeastern Arizona, United States, but some Hopi are now monolingual English-speakers.
The use of Hopi has gradually declined over the course of the 20th century. In 1990, it was estimated that more than 5,000 people could speak Hopi as a native language, but only 40 of them were monolingual in Hopi. The 1998 language survey of 200 Hopi people showed that 100% of Hopi elders were fluent, but fluency in adults was only 84%, 50% in young adults, and 5% in children.
Despite the apparent decline, Hopi and Navajo both are supported by bilingual education programs in Arizona, and children acquire the Native American languages as their first language.
Teaching and language revitalization efforts
Many Hopi children are being raised in the language. A comprehensive edited by Emory Sekaquaptewa and others has been published, and a group, the Hopi Literacy Project, has focused its attention on promoting the language. As of 2013, "a pilot language revitalization project, the Hopi Lavayi Nest Model Program, for families with children birth through 5," is being planned for the village of Sipaulovi.In 2004, Mesa Media, a nonprofit organization, was created to help revitalize the language.
Language variation
identifies four varieties of Hopi:- First Mesa
- Mishongnovi
- Shipaulovi
- Third Mesa
Mishongnovi is spoken on Second Mesa in Mishongnovi village. Mishongnovi has few speakers compared to First and Third Mesa dialects. Shipaulovi is also spoken on Second Mesa in Shipaulovi village, which is close to Mishongnovi village. Whorf notes that other villages on Second Mesa are of unknown dialectal affiliation.
An introductory textbook has been written by a Shongopavi speaker. Shongopavi is another village on the Second Mesa, but its relation to other dialects has not been analyzed. The Third Mesa dialect is spoken on Third Mesa at Oraibi village and in neighboring communities, as well as in Moenkopi village, which lies off Third Mesa and at a distance west of it.
The first published analysis of the Hopi language is Benjamin Whorf's study of Mishongnovi Hopi. His work was based primarily on a single off-reservation informant, but it was later checked by other reservation speakers. In his study, he states that Mishongnovi is the most archaic and phonemically complex of the dialects. The Third Mesa dialect preserves some older relics that have been lost in Mishongnovi.
Malotki reports that Third Mesa speakers of younger generations have lost the labialization feature of w on the different subject subordinator -qw after the vowels a, i, e, u where they have -q instead. This loss of labialization is also found on the simultaneity marker where younger speakers have -kyang against older -kyangw. In words with kw or ngw in the syllable coda, the labialization is also lost: naksu vs. nakwsu "he started out", hikni vs. kikwni "he will drink", tuusungti vs. tuusungwti "he got frozen".
Language contact
Hopi is part of the Pueblo linguistic area along with members of the Tanoan family, the Keresan languages, Zuni, and Navajo.Hopi speakers have traditionally used Hopi as the language of communication with Zuni. They have also been in close contact with a Tanoan language for over 300 years since the Arizona Tewa, who speak Tewa, moved from the Galisteo Basin following the Pueblo Revolt to reside on First Mesa. The Arizona Tewa have traditionally acted as translators for the Hopi-speaking Tewa, Hopi, Navajo, Spanish, and English.
The Hopi had cursory contact with Spanish beginning with the explorers in 1540. In 1629 a small group of Franciscan missionaries started arriving in Hopi territory, building a church the following year. They remained there until 1680 when the Pueblo Revolt occurred and the Hopi expelled the Spanish from the region. Both the practices of the Spanish when there, and the stories of negative experiences of Puebloan refugees from the Rio Grande region, contributed to a Hopi attitude where acculturation was resisted or rejected.
A number of studies have focused on loanwords borrowed into Hopi from other languages.
Phonology
Vowels
There are six basic vowels in Hopi:The vowel letter represents a sound that is similar to the vowel but with rounded lips. This sound also occurs, among other languages, in French and German.
The vowel letter represents a sound that is similar the vowel of English boot, but without rounded lips and further forward in the mouth. Some English speakers may find this vowel more similar to the vowel in "should" or to the "e" in "roses".
Consonants
Hopi dialects differ in their number of consonants. Below are two separate inventories of the Third Mesa and Mishongnovi dialects. The Third Mesa inventory has orthographic symbols and IPA transcriptions of those symbols when the IPA symbol differs from the orthographic symbol.As seen above, the Mishongnovi dialect has a larger number of consonants when compared with the Third Mesa dialect. The additional consonants are a series of preaspirated stops and a series of voiceless sonorants.
There is idiolectal free variation with the voiced labial fricative represented with, which varies between labiodental and bilabial. Before a consonant and at the end of words, it is not voiced although its realization is dependent upon dialect; Third Mesa speakers have while Mishongnovi speakers have.
The alveolar sibilants and are apical. In some Third Mesa speakers, they are palatalized to and, which can sound similar to and of English. In Mishongnovi, is palatalized when at the beginning of syllables and non-palatalized elsewhere.
Hopi has a number of stop contrasts at the velar place of articulation that occur before the low vowel. Elsewhere, the contrasts are neutralized. The velar in environments of neutralization is called "neutral" k by. Before the front vowels and, it is palatalized with a fronted articulation and following palatal glide. Thus, and are and, respectively. Before the non-front vowels and, it is a typical velar: is and is. Before the front rounded vowel, it has a backed articulation: is. Before, there is a phonemic contrast with fronted velar with following palatal glide and the backed velar. Complicating this pattern are words borrowed from Spanish that have a velar followed by a low vowel. With the addition of these loanwords, a third velar contrast has been introduced into Hopi. Words with this borrowed velar are "neutral" and typically velar in articulation. Thus, there is a distinction between and in native words both of which are distinct from in loanwords.
The precise phonetics of these k consonants is unclear due to vague descriptions in the literature. suggests that the fronted articulation represented by is distinguished more by presence of the palatal glide than by the difference in the articulatory position of the dorsal contact. He also mentions that the backed sound represented by is "not-so-far-back". This suggests that this sound is post-velar and not quite uvular. describes the fronted sound and the sound from Spanish loanwords as palatal while the backed ones are velar. describes the fronted form as palatal with palatal glide before some vowels, The form from Spanish loanwords as "ordinary k", and the backed form as velar. Whorf's letter to Clyde Kluckhohn in describes the backed velar as being like Arabic or Nootka, which suggests a uvular articulation. Whorf's phonemicization of Mishongnovi posits the fronted version occurring before all vowels but ; the backed form occurring before non-high vowels ; and the form from Spanish loanwords before.
Similarly to the velar stops, Hopi has a fronted dorsal nasal and a backed dorsal nasal represented as and, respectively. The fronted nasal is palatal. The backed nasal is described as velar in Third Mesa speech and thus forms a "neutral" series with "neutral" k. In Mishongnovi speech, Whorf describes the backed nasal as having the more rear articulation of the backed dorsal:.
The retroflex sound represented with varies between a retroflex fricative and a flap, although the fricative realization is much more common. In Mishongnovi, this sound is only weakly fricative. In syllable coda position, it is devoiced to a voiceless fricative.
The preaspirated stops and voiceless sonorants of Mishongnovi only occur in syllable coda position. However, they do contrast with plain stops and voiced sonorants in this position. Whorf notes that the preaspirated stops also contrast with a similar sequence of + stop.
Orthography
Hopi is written using the Latin alphabet. The vowel letters correspond to the phonemes of Hopi as follows: , , , , and . Long vowels are written double:,,,,,.Consonants are written:
To distinguish certain consonants written as digraphs from similar looking phonemes meeting across syllable boundaries, a period is used: kwaahu but kuk.wuwàaqe.
Syllable structure
The most common syllable clusters are CV and CVC.The CVCC cluster is very rare due to limited number of CC combinations in the language. This also makes it unusual to find the intrasyllabic clusters C-C and CC-C.
Stress
The stress pattern in Hopi follows a simple rule that applies to nearly all words.- In words with one or two vowels, the first vowel is stressed.
- Where there are more than two vowels, the first vowel is stressed if it is long or it is directly followed by two consonants. Otherwise, the second vowel is stressed.
Tone
The Third Mesa dialect of Hopi has developed tone on long vowels, diphthongs, and vowel + sonorant sequences. This dialect has either falling tones or level tones.The falling tone in the Third Mesa dialect corresponds to either a vowel + preaspirated consonant, a vowel + voiceless sonorant, or a vowel + h sequence in the Second Mesa dialect recorded by Whorf.
Morphology
Suffixes
Hopi uses suffixes for a variety of purposes. Some examples are:| suffix | purpose | example | meaning |
| ma | go along | wayma | walking along |
| numa | go around | waynuma | walking around |
| mi | to, towards | itamumi | towards us |
| ni | future | tuuvani | will throw |
| ngwu | habitual suffix | tuuvangwu | usually throws |
| ve/pe | location | Ismo'walpe | at Ismo'wala |
| q | distance suffix | atkyamiq | all the way to the bottom |
| sa | only | suksa | only one |
Hopi also has free postpositions:
Nouns are marked as oblique by either the suffixes -t for simple nouns or -y for dual nouns, possessed nouns or plural nouns.
Some examples are shown below:
| nominative | oblique | meaning |
| himutski | himutskit | shrub |
| iisaw | iisawuy | coyote |
| itam | itamuy | we/us |
| nuva | nuvat | snow |
| nu' | nuy | I/me |
| paahu | paahut | spring water |
| pam | put | he/she/it |
| puma | pumuy | they |
| tuuwa | tuuwat | sand |
| um | ung | you |
Verbs are also marked by suffixes but these are not used in a regular pattern. For example, the suffixes -lawu and -ta are both used to make a simple verb into a durative one but it is hard to predict which suffix applies to which verbs. Second language learners of Hopi usually simply learn this by rote.
There are some gender specific terms in Hopi:
| male speech | female speech | meaning |
| a'ni | hin'ur | very |
| kwakwha | askwali | thank you |
| lolma | nukwangw | good |
| owi, 'wi | oo'o, 'wiya | yes |
Morphological processes
- Elision - when the stress-shift would cause a clipped vowel not in the first syllable to have a low stress, that vowel is elided.
- Lenition - initial p becomes v when it becomes internal to a word or when the word is preceded by another word used as an adjectival or an incorporated verbal modifier.
- Reduplication - stem-initial CV, stem-final CV and word-final V are reduplicated.
Syntax
Word order
The simplest type of sentence in Hopi is simply a subject and a predicate: 'Maana wuupa'.However, many Hopi sentences also include an object, which is inserted between the subject and the verb. Thus, Hopi is a subject–object–verb language.
Case
Nouns are marked as subject or oblique, as shown above.Pronouns are also marked as either nominative or oblique. For example, the singular subject pronoun "you" in Hopi is um, and the form for the singular object pronoun is ung.
Demonstratives are marked by case in Hopi, shown first in their nominative form and then in their oblique form:
iˈ/it - this
pam/put - he
miˈ/mit - to
ima/imuy - these
puma/pumuy - they
mima/mimuy - those
Number
Hopi has plural verbs. Dual noun subjects take the dual suffix -vit but singular verbs. Hopi does not have dual pronouns; instead, the plural pronouns may be used with singular verbs for a dual meaning. Noun and verb plurality is indicated, among other devices, by partial reduplication, marked in the gloss below with a tilde.| Noun subject | Pronoun subject | |
| Sg | taaqa nøøsa | ni’ nøøsa |
| Sg | a man ate | I ate |
| Du | taaqa-vit nøøsa | itam nøøsa |
| Du | two men ate | we two ate |
| Pl | taa~taqt nøø~nøsa | itam nøø~nøsa |
| Pl | several men ate | we all ate |