| Karankawa | |
|---|---|
| Clamcoëhs | |
| Spoken in | United States |
| Region | Texas coast, from Galveston Island to Corpus Christi |
| Ethnicity | Karankawa people |
| Extinct | 1858 |
| Language family |
unclassified
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | zkk |
|
Pre-contact distribution of the Karankawa language
|
|
Karankawa is the extinct, unclassified language of the Texan coast, where the Karankawa people migrated between the mainland and the barrier islands. It was not closely related to other known languages in the area, much of which are also poorly attested, and may have been a language isolate. A couple hundred words are preserved, collected in 1698, 1720, and 1828; in the 1880s, three lists were collected from non-Karankawa who knew some words.
Karankawa has sometimes been included with neighboring languages in a Coahuiltecan family, but that is now thought to be spurious.