Saturday, May 1, 2010

Running the Coast: Mapping Language Boundaries

I finished running the civilian part of the San Diego County coast some months ago but if I want to do the whole county including Pendleton, I still have one more piece (from the southern border of Pendleton to Las Pulgas). Turns out that my most recent piece of it, from Las Pulgas to the O.C. border, was the southern half of the JuaneƱo (Acjachemen) territory. Next time if I run from the OC border to just south of Laguna Beach I'll have covered the rest of the Acjachemen Nation. Maybe I should start marking my runs in terms of languages or language families:

(That's a WikiMapi)

On second thought scratch that - everything along the coast in this picture is Uto-Aztecan, and it'll be awhile until I'm in Chumash territory up in Santa Monica. I have to say it's curious that the Kumeyaay were omitted from this map. I like Kumeyaay because it's the only coastal San Diego County group from a language family that also has members in the Bay Area or NorCal (Hokan, which contains Pomo, ancestral tongue of the Sonoma Coast and of thrash metal vocalist extraordinaire Chuck Billy). Which is why the only casino I go to is Sycuan.

Wow, that's a lot of digressions even for me.

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