A Practical Grammar of the San Carlos Apache Language

San Carlos Apache is a variety of Western Apache, a Southern Athabascan (or Apachean) language spoken on and around the San Carlos Reservation in east central Arizona, USA. It might of interest to Karl May readers to know that the Apache words in Karl May's Winnetou books were actually San Carlos Apache, even though Winnetou was supposed to have been a Mescalero Apache. Although there might be as many as 13,000 speakers of Western Apache, very few children are learning the language, and therefore its future is not assured. This pedagogical grammar covers the major topics of San Carlos Apache phonology, morphology, and syntax. It is designed for undergraduate university students and high school language teachers with some training in linguistics. It can also be used as a teach yourself text. Since there is at this time no reference grammar, it can also be profitably used as a reference document by professional linguists. The work contains an introduction on the goals and scope of the text, an introductory lesson on the pronunciation and spelling of San Carlos Apache, followed by 20 graded lessons on morphological and syntactic topics. Each of these lessons contains grammatical explanations, numerous example sentences, exercises for non-native speakers, more advanced exercises for native speakers, and dialogs with translations. The appendices contain suggestions for further reading, a detailed index of grammatical terminology and topics, and an index to the verb paradigms. The book ends with full Apache-English and English-Apache glossaries. This grammar was written with the assistance of Phillip Goode, a renowned native language expert and teacher. Several other native language consultants also provided input.