On Keresan languages and their vocabulary connections, publ. on the 02/10/2026

Keresan languages are a small family of languages spoken in the southwestern USA. There are some dictionaries available online for Keres, but to a large degree, this language, or rather, languages, are kept pretty secret. Some of the Keresan languages are very little known about, in public literature that is. Others have dictionaries published for them. But in all cases, there are layers of Keresan vocabulary which are excluded from public sources. For the western academic this might seem strange, but for indigenous people, languages are very sacred. And the Keresan speakers are not the only indigenous peoples who deliberately keep safe and hidden certain words and phrases in their languages. A big reason for this is that many of these more secret words and phrases are of a religious nature, and their application, according to Keresan and other beliefs, is to act with great power, something which also requires great responsibility, and contextual cultural and religious learning, enabling the speaker to apply and to use these words and phrases only in the contexts where they are meant to be used. If you believe that words are inanimate and interchangeable then this concept might seem unusual. But, if like me, you believe that words themselves and their use carry real vibrational energy, power, and produce real affects, then it makes perfect sense. My Hopi friend once told me - as they have similar protections about certain use of language in his culture, that his language contains fossilised ritual phrases that are connected to the most ancient ancestral groups, which he described as being over 10,000 years old - easily. Other Pueblo peoples in the southwest have similar protection systems around their languages, the unrelated Taos language being a primary example. In the northwest Pacific, speakers of some Salishan and Wakashan languages also keep certain sacred vocabulary secret, and there can even be certain words or phrases that are kept secretly within certain lines and families. Whilst I do see the benefit to recording these words and phrases in some form, so that, God forbid, if this knowledge ever tragically disappears, then descendants of these people still have access to it, but I still think that any recorded versions of these words and phrases should not be publicly accessible. The vocabulary I discuss below is not to my knowledge secret vocabulary as it is published publicly, but nevertheless I do wonder whether or not the similarities with Uralic, which I demonstrate below, might in some way increase beyond the examples given below, if the secret, sacred vocabulary was included. But of course, we cannot include it, and this is something will likely never be confirmed or denied publicly, but in a sense that makes it more exciting. I have no idea though, for all I know the more sacred Keresan vocabulary might show fewer similarities with Uralic.

I would also like to say that Keresan languages, are to me, just beautiful to listen to. I hear similarities in phonetics with Siouxan and Caddoan languages, but Keresan languages are also tonal, and to me sometimes certain syllables remind me of the way certain syllables sound in Chinese. I would love to have the opportunity to speak some Keres one day, not in order to find secret words, but because I would genuinely love to be able to speak a bit of one of these languages. Anyway, below is 

.Proto-Keresan *c̍ízɪ - "water" (1), similar roots meaning "water" are found elsewhere, including in the Sámi Uralic languages, e.g. Northern Sámi čáhci - "water". I am unsure whether or not Quechua qocha - "lake" might also be related, among many other examples. 

.Proto-Keresan *sc̐ísᴀ - "six" (1), this, and the Proto-Keresan words for "two" and "to know", among some others, show some similarities to forms in Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic, but we can also compare this root to Quechua soqta - "six" and more distantly to Finnish kuusi - "six". Not surprisingly we also see similarities to Basque, e.g. Proto-Keresan *šùˑga - "snake" (1) and Basque suge - "snake". 

.Proto-Keresan: *káṣâidɪ - "summer" (1), compare Finnish kesä - "summer" and many other words, including many words for "sun" and "moon" in different Native American language families.

.Proto-Keresan: *k̠ᴀčᴀ - "to see" (1), compare Finnish katsoa - "to see" or "to watch" and related connected words, in Uralic and in other families.

.Proto-Keresan *zêˑni - "language" (1), perhaps connected to Quechua simi - "language" and to Finnish sana - "word". 

.Proto-Keresan *ʔísgᴀ - "one" (1). This word has similarities to words for "one" in many other Indigenous American languages, including to Quechua huq or shuk, to Kallawaya uksi, and more generally to Uralic words for "one", e.g. Finnish yksi and to Estonian üks, etc, both of which mean "one". 

.Proto-Keresan *c̆émɪ - "three" (1), compare for example Quechua kimsa/kinsa - "three", Mapuche küla - "three", and in terms of Uralic: Finnish kolme - "three", and Northern Sámi golbma - "three", etc, among many other examples across different language families. 

I think Keresan languages are extremely interesting, and I have been told that these languages were, a long time ago, spoken more widely, and were connected to certain important cultural layers of the shared history of peoples in the southwest USA. That Keresan languages have a particular, sacred function, is something I feel that I can hear when I listen to them spoken. This blog post was written in honour of all Keresan speakers. 

References: all Proto-Keresan vocabulary (given with (1)) is sourced from: Miller, Wick R. and Davis, Irvine. 1963. Proto-Keresan phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 29: 310-330.