Seri Language

Sources

• http://www.omniglot.com/writing/seri.htm
• http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/267
• http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/521732?uid=3739704&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104757282181
• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/535570/Seri
• http://www-01.sil.org/mexico/seri/00i-seri.htm
• http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/SERIS/HISTORY.HTM

Fun fact! The tribe was composed of ferocious fighters; exaggerated stories were told of their raking the flesh off a man's arm. This led to many rumors about cannibalism. The stories received a lot of press coverage in the early days of this century when people disappeared in Seri territory, but there was never any proof.

Facts about the Language

• last surviving member of its language family and nothing is know of the other members
• The Seri alphabet was developed in the 1950s by Edward W. and Mary B. Moser
• Revised by Stephen Marlett
• The first Seri word-list was collected in the 1850s when the language was believed to be a dialect of Arabic, and since the 1950s some stories have been published, the New Testament has been translated, and a number of other publications in Seri have appeared.

What the Seri People call themselves (2nd one is singular)

• http://www-01.sil.org/mexico/seri/02b-Seri-Comcaac.wav
• http://www-01.sil.org/mexico/seri/02c-Seri-cmiique.wav

• After the 17th century, conflict began with the Spanish. The Seri people were forced to abandon camps often and flee; losing their territory. Their numbers decreased due to introduced foreign diseases, war, and starvation. By the 1930s the Seri population had decreased to three hundred. In the 1930s some Seri began to work with non-lndians. More and more Seri moved back to the mainland, and by the 1960s the island they had fled to was virtually abandoned. In 1965, the Mexican government established a game preserve on Tiburón Island and the Seri are no longer permitted to hunt there.
• Most of the tribe is now concentrated in a few camps north of Kino Bay. The Seri population has increased steadily, and now there is some intermarriage with non-Seri.
• Today, Seri do their fishing from wooden boats equipped with outboard motors. Their catches are preserved with ice brought in by wholesale handlers who sell the fish in Mexican and United States markets.
• The Seris had a school at Kino Bay in the 1920s and one at Desemboque for a few years in the 1940s. The present Mexican rural school at Desemboque was established in 1952. Most Seri speak a working Spanish in addition to their native Hokan tongue

Society

• The Seri people of Mexico were traditionally seminomadic hunter-gatherers
• survival was tied to the traits and behaviors of the species that live in the desert and the sea.
• An intimate relationship with the plant and animal worlds is a hallmark of the Seris’ life and of their language
• Their livelihood today is based on commercial fishing and the sale of shell necklaces, ironwood carvings, and traditional baskets.

• spoken by about a thousand people in two villages on the coast of Sonora, Mexico; western Sonoran Desert near the Gulf of California

The total Seri population was less than 200 in the 1930's. Today it is at least three times larger. The Serian family has the smallest number of speakers of any family in Mexico.

Background

• native name for the language: cmiique iitom,
• means "(that) with which a Seri person speaks"
• The language has also been called kunkaak, a version of the native name for the Seri people, comcaac.
• The origins of the name Seri are uncertain
• Considered a language isolate

Seri (Cmiique Iitom)

Karen Lopez