Language and Name
The Cahuilla language is in the Uto-Aztecan family. A 1990 census revealed 35 speakers in an ethnic population of 800. It is nearly extinct, since most speakers are middle-aged or older. In their own language, their autonym is Iviatim, and the name of their language is Ivia. Cahuilla is an exonym applied to the group after mission secularization in the Ranchos of California. The word "Cahuilla" is probably from the Ivia word kawi'a, meaning "master."
Read more about this topic: Cahuilla People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)