Zuni language, alphabet and pronunciation, and the Z Uni Indian Tribe, can be found on The Ancient Tongue.
The Zuni people are indigenous to western New Mexico and eastern Arizona.It is spoken by 9,500 people in the vicinity of Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, and smaller numbers in parts of Arizona.
Zuni, unlike most indigenous languages in the US, is still spoken by a significant number of children.Zuni is the main language of communication and is used in the home.[3]
The Zuni name for their own language, Shiwima, is pronounced "vernacular" and can be translated as "Zuni way".
Zuni is a foreign language.At least 7,000 years ago, Zuni may have become a distinct language.A number of words from Keresan, Hopi, and Pima have been borrowed by the Zuni.[5]
Several possible relationships of Zuni to other languages have been proposed, but none of them have gained general acceptance.The Penutian, Tanoan, Hokan phyla, and Keresan languages are some of the possible connections.
The most clearly articulated hypothesis is Newman's 1964 connection to Penutian, but even this was considered by Newman to be a tongue-in-cheek work due to the inherently problematic nature of the methodology used.Newman's sets had problems with comparative linguistics, such as comparing commonly borrowed forms."tobacco" forms have large semantic differences."bad" and "garbage" are examples of nursery forms.Zuni was included under both the Penutioid proposal and Joseph Greenberg's very inclusive Penutian sub-grouping.
Zuni was included as part of the Aztec-Tanoan language family without supporting evidence.The Aztec-Tanoan hypothesis was excluded from later discussions.
There was problematic evidence published by Karl-Heinz Gursky.The paper "Zui Discovered to be Hokan" was written by J. P. Harrington.
A number of features with Hopi, Keresan, and Tanoan are probably due to language contact, as Zuni is a language in the Pueblo linguistic area.The Keresan and Tanoan languages have complete series of ejectives, which may be the reason for the development of Zuni's consonants.Insturments may have moved into Zuni.The final devoicing of vowels and sonorant consonants, dual number, ceremonial vocabulary, and the presence of a labialized velar are some of the shared traits.
The 16 vowels of Zuni are different from the orthography.
Word order in Zuni is quite free.No case-marking is done on nouns.It's important to remember that terms are complex, compared to nouns.Other languages in the Southwest use switch-reference.
According to Newman, Zuni words are classified according to their structural properties, not their associated frames.His terms are not synonymous.
Zuni uses overt pronouns.There is no third person pronoun.The pronouns distinguish three numbers and three cases.Subject and possessive pronouns have different forms depending on whether they appear utterance-medially or finally.The table shows all the pronoun forms.
The first and second persons have syncretism between dual and non-possessive forms.The fact that the pronouns agree with the forms of the verbs is what makes them disguised.
Zuni adults are known for their relationship with a child.A person might be called the "Father of so-and-so".The circumlocution is used to avoid using adult names that have religious meanings.[6]
Before the alphabet was standardized, Linguists and anthropologists created and used their own writing system for Zuni.Stanley Newman created one for Zuni.The substitution of some uncommon letters with other letters or digraphs was used in the orthography.Dennis Tedlock uses revised orthography in his oral narratives.