Shalliy Rammaytush!

When I founded the Muchia Te’ Indigenous Land Trust (Muchiateilt.org) in 2021, I knew that learning my ancestral language would play an important role in our work, helping to connect living descendants with the ancestors. There had been no known speakers of Rammaytush in more than one hundred years and documentation was sparse.

An early mentor in this work for me was L Frank Manriquez (Tongva/Ajachmem), a two-spirit Indigenous artist, writer, canoe builder and tribal activist. She is co-founder of Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, as well as the Breath of Life program, which brings California Natives together with language teachers for the purpose of language learning and revitalization. The Breath of Life program (founded in 1995) has been a model for Indigenous language revitalization programs across Turtle Island. I will always be grateful for L’s initial (even prior to my enrollment in the Breath of Life program) and ongoing guidance and encouragement in my journey of learning my ancestral language!*

At Breath of Life (2022), with the help of doctorate linguistic student Alex Elias, who assisted me in researching primary sources written by Spanish-speaking visitors to California, I continued my Rammaytush language journey. We examined a source from 1775, when Father Vicente Santa Maria recorded words spoken by Rammaytush speakers on Angel Island; we looked at the words and phrases of 64-year-old Pedro Alcantara (born in Cotegen tribal territory, present-day Half Moon Bay) recorded at Mission Dolores in 1850 and also the reports of JP Harrington from 1912 and 1921.

An early request I had of Alex was to help me translate the name of my family’s ancestral village site, Timigtac, which lies along Calera Creek in what is now known as Pacifica, as well as the village site of Pruristac, along San Pedro Creek, which nowadays is more commonly known as the Sanchez Adobe.  I learned that -tac at the end of a village name is a place reference, so it can be translated as ‘the place of.’  With Alex’s help, we looked to neighboring languages for clues to the meaning of the ancestral village names, beginning with Chochenyo, which is the most closely related language to Rammaytush. In fact, the name Rammaytush comes from the Chochenyo language.  Rammay means ‘west’ in Chochenyo, and the suffix –tush means ‘people from;’ so from the perspective of the East Bay, they were referring to the inhabitants of the Peninsula as “the people of the west” or “westerners.” To find the meaning of Timigtac, we found it necessary to look to the Amah Mutsun language, which is slightly more distant in relationship from Rammaytush than is Chochenyo, but like Chochenyo has been well documented. Finding timik (‘whale’) in Amah Mutsun was the key to unlocking the secret of Timigtac, ‘the place of the whales.’ With further investigation, we translated pruris as ‘sandhill cranes;’ therefore, Pruristac, we translated as ‘the place of the sandhill cranes.’ Prior to them being hunted to near extinction, the San Pedro valley was the resting place for the cranes on their coastal migratory route. As one begins to see, learning our Indigenous language further reaffirms our close and constant relationship with the natural world around us, as we find that in translating place names, they are descriptive of place and indicative of our interconnectivity.

Since March of 2023, with the help of Alex Elias and Nimkiins MikZaabii (our current “language helpers,” as L Frank affectionately calls them), myself, several family members and friends have started Shalliy Rammaytush! (‘Speak Rammaytush!’), a Rammaytush language school that meets weekly in Moss Beach. It is especially exciting for us as descendants to reconnect with our heritage in such a meaningful and intimate relationship with the ancestors! Now that we are more than ten months into this exploration, we are discovering flaws in the original documentation of our language, which we are cooperatively working on to address. 

The Rammaytush language was first written down by Spanish speakers who wrote the language as they perceived it. Some of the common mistakes involve what letter was chosen to represent a sound in Rammaytush. Since we have learned the sounds of Rammaytush, we are considering making some changes (and in some cases have already agreed on changes) in orthography to better reflect the sounds of our ancestral language. For example, Rammaytush does not have a “g” sound, but it does have a “k” sound; therefore a more accurate spelling of my family’s ancestral village site would be Timiktak, instead of Timigtac. The ancestral tribal band area known as “Chiguan” would be more authentically represented as “Chiwuan.”  There are many ancestral place names that we will likely consider “correcting” in order to better represent them in Rammaytush.

Another example of a corrective change that we have consensus on involves the long consonant and vowel sounds characteristic of the Rammaytush language.  Rammaytush words such as kattra (‘girl’), mayyal (‘coyote’), muur (‘night’), and many others evidence this common feature. Because the word rammay (west) from Chochenyo has the long m-sound, we have begun spelling Rammaytush with two m’s to reflect the accurate pronunciation.

In our language school, we have begun to write songs, poems and stories in the Rammaytush language! My cousin Richie Beltran, our song-keeper, wrote a beautiful song in Rammaytush. With his permission, here is the title and first verse from his song: 

Laskamin Winnamin ‘at Sholkote Winnamin
(White Bird and Black Bird)

Sholkote winnamin ‘at laskamin winnamin makkam-kam ‘ek olchenmak
(Black bird and white bird you are my sisters)
Laskamin winnamin ‘at sholkote winnamin makkam-kam ‘ek takkakma
(White bird and black bird you are my brothers)
Sholkote winnamin ‘at laskamin winnamin makkam-kam winna ‘ek hinnantak
(Black bird and white bird you fly inside my heart)

Our language class has also helped me obtain a personal goal: I am able to speak in Rammaytush to greet friends, make introductions and welcome visitors!

The relatives and I, through cooperation and teamwork, are enjoying the process of filling in gaps and puzzling together our ancestral language. One evening in class, we inquired as to how we might say, “Our ancestors.” The response was, it’s not known in the Rammaytush language. Again we looked to the closely related Chochenyo language, where we found the word suyya for ‘relative.’  In Chochenyo, when referring to a deceased grandparent, the ending –kush is added. So we have taken suyya, added –kush, and then –mak (the Rammaytush suffix that marks the plural), to create suyyakushmak (‘deceased relatives’). Putting our minds together, we have created the word that we need for “ancestor.” “Our ancestors” would be mak suyyakushmak.

We are thrilled to be moving forward in the progression and revitalization of our Rammaytush language! For those interested in supporting our language revitalization work, please visit muchiateilt.org/donate
We are very appreciative of all support! Thank you!
Kanna-k Cata Gomes

*footnote: For a conversation at the California Institute of Integral Studies between L Frank and Cata Gomes entitled “Voices from California Indigenous Language & Cultural Revitalization”: