Ineseño Chumash Language
On these pages you’ll find general information about the Chumash languages.
- The family of Chumash languages
- How the Chumash languages put things together
- The Chumash languages compared
- Surviving Chumash placenames
- Chumash Narrative Folklore and How People Spoke
ha spe
y he ha 
up ma kiyaql
w ha s
amalas
amala is the term by which the Inezeño originally called themselves. Inezeño (also spelled Ineseño and Ynezeño) is a Spanish word based on the name of the Mission Santa Ynez, founded in 1804 near a village called 
alaxulapu.
samala is pronounced s–hamala, much like the s–h of the English word “grasshopper.”A great deal of what we know about the Chumash language spoken in the Santa Ynez valley comes to us as a result of the patience and dedication of Maria Solares. Maria was born in the 1840s and died in 1923.
Between approximately 1912 and 1919, Maria worked with John P. Harrington, a linguist who dedicated himself to recording as much as he could of the native languages of California, Chumash as well as many others.
Maria provided Harrington with a wealth of information on the language, beliefs, culture and customs of the Inezeño and their neighbors. Harrington was gifted with an extraordinarily keen ear for language and he recorded what Maria told him in meticulous detail.