Linguist Deborah Sanchez grew up hearing only a few words in Šmuwič, an Indigenous language originating from the central Californian coast. Šmuwič words peppered her parents’ speech, giving Sanchez glimpses of the language of her heritage.
Now, as faculty and a current master’s student at Cal State Long Beach, Sanchez is devoting her life to stitching these words together, revitalizing and sharing the language, which has been dormant for decades. She sees it as “an ancestral responsibility to carry these things forward.”
Šmuwič exists in the family of Chumashan languages, spoken across the region encompassing what is now San Luis Obispo to Malibu, as well as interior land stretching toward the Central Valley. Approximately two centuries ago, close to 90 languages were spoken in California, then the most linguistically diverse area of North America, according to the California Language Archive…