Hopi Language - Language Variation

Language Variation

Benjamin Whorf identifies four varieties (dialects) of Hopi:

• First Mesa (or Whorf's Polacca)
• Mishongnovi (or Whorf's Toreva)
• Shipaulovi (or Whorf's Sipaulovi)
• Third Mesa (or Whorf's Oraibi)

First Mesa is spoken on First Mesa (which is the eastern mesa) in Polacca village in Walpi pueblo and in other neighboring communities. A community of Arizona Tewa live on First Mesa, and its members speak Tewa, in addition to a variety of Hopi and English and Spanish.

Mishongnovi is spoken on Second Mesa (which is the central mesa) in Mishongnovi village. Mishongnovi has few speakers compared to First and Third Mesa dialects. Shipaulovi is also spoken on Second Mesa in Shipaulovi village, which is close to Mishongnovi village. Whorf notes that other villages on Second Mesa are of unknown dialectal affiliation.

An introductory textbook (Kalectaca 1978) has been written by a Shongopavi speaker. Shongopavi is another village on the Second Mesa, but its relation to other dialects has not been analyzed. The Third Mesa dialect is spoken on Third Mesa (which is the western mesa) at Oraibi village and in neighboring communities, as well as in Moenkopi village, which lies off Third Mesa and at a distance west of it.

The first published analysis of the Hopi language is Benjamin Whorf's study of Mishongnovi Hopi. His work was based primarily on a single off-reservation informant, but it was later checked by other reservation speakers. In his study, he states that Mishongnovi is the most archaic and phonemically complex of the dialects. The Third Mesa dialect preserves some older relics that have been lost in Mishongnovi.

Malotki (1983) reports that Third Mesa speakers of younger generations have lost the labialization feature of w on the different subject subordinator -qw after the vowels a, i, e, u where they have -q instead. This loss of labialization is also found on the simultaneity marker where younger speakers have -kyang against older -kyangw. In words with kw or ngw in the syllable coda, the labialization is also lost: naksu (younger) vs. nakwsu (older) "he started out", hikni (younger) vs. kikwni (older) "he will drink", tuusungti (younger) vs. tuusungwti (older) "he got frozen".