Cocopah is a Delta language of the Yuman language family spoken by the Cocopah. In an effort to keep the language alive, which was spoken by fewer than 400 people at the turn of the 21st-century, the Cocopah Museum began offering Cocopah language classes to children in 1998.
The language had no alphabet until the 1970s when a scholar developed one for a university dissertation. It proved to be less than ideal, and a new alphabet was developed by the tribe in the early 2000s. As the revival of the language has progressed, it has been necessary to find words for modern objects that didn't exist in the ancient language. These issues are referred to the elders of the tribe for a decision.[3] Cocopah in Mexico use a different orthography designed by the INALI.
Word-initial two-consonant clusters usually consist of a fricative plus another consonant, e.g. /sp, ʂm, ʃp, xt͡ʃ/. Rarer two-consonant clusters start with a lateral or a stop consonant, e.g. /lt͡ʃ, ɬʲt͡ʃ, ps, t͡ʃp/.
Three-consonant clusters are rare, recorded examples include /pxk, pxkʷ, spx/.
Crawford, James M. (1970). Cocopa Baby Talk. International Journal of American Linguistics, 36, 9-13.
Crawford, James M. (1978). More on Cocopa Baby Talk. International Journal of American Linguistics, 44, 17-23.
Crawford, James M. (1989). Cocopa Dictionary. University of California Publications in Linguistics (Vol. 114). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09749-1.
Crawford, James M. (1983). Cocopa Texts. University of California Publications in Linguistics (Vol. 100). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09652-5.
Crawford, James M. (1998). Classificatory Verbs in Cocopa. In Hinton, L. & Munro, P. (Eds.), American Indian Languages: Description and Theory (pp. 5–9). Berkeley: University of California.
Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
Wares, Alan C. (1968). A Comparative Study of Yuman Consonantism. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica (No. 57). The Hauge: Mouton.