Roscinda_Nolasquez

Roscinda Nolásquez

Roscinda Nolásquez

The last speaker of the Cupeño language of Southern California.

Roscinda Nolásquez (1892 – February 4, 1987)[1] was a Cupeño, and the last speaker of the Cupeño language of Southern California. She grew up speaking Cupeño and Spanish. It was not until she was forcefully sent to Sherman Indian School, previously Perris Indian School, in her early teens that she learned English.[2] In 1903, the Cupeño people had to relocate to the Pala Indian Reservation where Nolásquezlived much of rest of her life.[1] In the early 1960s, she continued to speak Cupeño with several elderly residents in Pala.[2]

Nolásquez made a serious effort late in her life to help document and preserve the Cupeño language, working among others with linguists Jane Hill and Roderick Jacobs.[1] Together with Hill she edited a collection of bilingual Cupeño-English oral histories.[3]

Works

  • Hill, Jane; Nolasquez, R. (1973). Mulu'wetam: the First People: Cupeño Oral History and Language. Malki Museum Press.
  • Roscinda Nolasquez and Anne Galloway (1975): I'i Muluwet: First Book of Words in the Cupeño Indian Language of Southern California. Pala, Calif: Alderbooks.

References

  1. [1]
    Brigandi, P. (2009). "Roscinda Nolasquez Remembered". The Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. 9 (1): 3.
  2. [2]
    Nancy Dorian (ed) (1992): Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death. Cambridge University Press.
  3. [3]
    Hill, J. H; Nolasquez, R. (1973). Mulu'wetam: the First People: Cupeño Oral History and Language. Malki Museum Press.


Stub icon

This biographical article about an Indigenous person of North America is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Roscinda_Nolasquez, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.