| has gloss | eng: Umatilla is a variety of Southern Sahaptin, part of the Sahaptian subfamily of the Plateau Penutian group. It was spoken during late aboriginal times along the Columbia River and is therefore also called Columbia River Sahaptin. It is currently spoken as a first language by a few dozen elders and some adults in the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon. Some sources say that Umatilla is derived from imatilám-hlama: hlama means those living at or people of and there is an ongoing debate about the meaning of imatilám, but it is said to be an island in the Columbia River. B. Rigsby and N. Rude mention the village of ímatalam that was situated at the mouth of the Umatilla River and where the language was spoken. Phonology Rigsby and Rude use a technical alphabet based upon the Americanist phonetic notation to transcribe Umatilla, though other practical orthographies also exist. Vowels | class="wikitable" |- ! ! '[[front vowel|front textures ! [[central vowel|central]] ! [[back vowel|back]] |- | [[high vowel|high]] | i, ii | ɨ | u, uu |- | [[low vowel|low]] | | a, aa | |} All long vowels are written as clusters of identical short vowels. |
