Klamath language
Plateau Penutian languages of Northwestern United States
Klamath (), also Klamath–Modoc () and historically Lutuamian (), is a Plateau Penutian language spoken around Klamath Lake in what is now southern Oregon and northern California. It is the traditional language of the Klamath and Modoc peoples, each of whom spoke a dialect of the language. By 1998, only one native speaker remained, and by 2003, this last fluent Klamath speaker who was living in Chiloquin, Oregon, was 92 years old. As of 2006 there were no fluent native speakers of either the Klamath or Modoc dialects; however, as of 2019, revitalization efforts are underway with the goal of creating new speakers.
Klamath is a member of the Plateau Penutian language family, which is in turn a branch of the proposed Penutian language family. Like other proposed Penutian languages, Plateau Penutian languages are rich in ablaut, much like Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages. Further evidence for this classification includes some consonant correspondences between Klamath and other alleged Penutian languages. For example, the Proto-Yokuts retroflexes */ʈ ʈʼ/ correspond to Klamath /tʃ tʃʼ/, and the Proto-Yokuts dentals */t̪ t̪ʰ t̪ʼ/ correspond to the Klamath alveolars /t tʰ tʼ/.
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
Plosives in Klamath, aside from /ʔ/, come in triplets of unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective sounds. Sonorant triplets are voiced, voiceless, and glottalized sounds.
“Klamath language” enters the record as plateau Penutian languages of Northwestern United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Klamath, language and Plateau can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2669248. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Klamath language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.