Karkin

The traditional Karkin language area is on the shores of the Carquinez Strait in the northern San Francisco Bay. Karkin is attested only in a single, short vocabulary recorded by Father Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta in 1821. In pre-contact times, there were approximately 200 speakers of Karkin (Levy 1978).

Map of the Ohlone languages
Map of the Ohlone languages (Richard L. Levy. 1976. Costanoan internal relationships. Berkeley: Archaeological Research Facility, University of California.)

Karkin (also spelled “Carquin”) is an Ohlone (or “Costanoan”) language, along with Awaswas, Chalon, Chochenyo, Mutsun, Ramaytush, Rumsen, and Tamyen. The Ohlone languages comprise one branch of the hypothesized Penutian language family, within which they form a subgroup with the Miwokan languages (Central Sierra Miwok, Coast Miwok, Lake Miwok, Northern Sierra Miwok, Plains Miwok, Saclan, and Southern Sierra Miwok). Penutian also includes Klamath-Modoc, the Maiduan languages (Konkow, Maidu, and Nisenan), the Wintuan languages (Nomlaki, Patwin, and Wintu), and the Yokuts languages.

Selected archival materials at Berkeley

Further reading

  • Beeler, M. S. 1961. Northern Costanoan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 3:191-197. [PDF - may not be publicly available]
  • Callaghan, Catherine A. 1988. Karkin revisited. International Journal of American Linguistics, 54:436-452. [PDF - may not be publicly available]
  • Hinton, Leanne. 2001. The Ohlone Languages. In Leanne Hinton & Kenneth Hale (eds.) The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. San Diego: Academic Press
  • Okrand, Marc. 1989. More on Karkin and Costanoan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 55:254-258. [PDF - may not be publicly available]
  • Milliken, Randall, Shoup, Laurence H. & Ortiz, Beverly R. 2009. Ohlone/Coastanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today. Oakland: Archaeological and Historical Consultants. [PDF]