Home › Glossary › Letter O

Ohlone

Mythology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Indigenous California people whose oral traditions feature Coyote as a trickster and Earth Mother as creator, reflecting ecological and spiritual worldviews.

Detailed Definition
The Ohlone people of the San Francisco Bay Area tell of Coyote as a creator and Earth Mother as the source of life. Their cosmology emphasizes local ecology and seasonal cycles. In poetry, Ohlone references evoke urban indigenous resilience, linguistic revival, and the sacredness of bay and redwood, often used to explore themes of return, ecological memory, and the survival of California’s first peoples.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ohlone, referencing the California coastal people, appears in poetry as the whisper of tule reeds in restored wetlands; A verse uses “Ohlone” to honor shellmounds as ancestral libraries now paved over; Contemporary poets invoke Ohlone place names like “Sausal” to reclaim linguistic geography; In lyrical form, Ohlone grandmothers stir acorn soup with stories that thicken the broth; Ohlone identity becomes a coyote track in verse—fleeting but undeniable.
Additional Notes
Ohlone (Costanoan) peoples of California have rich oral traditions centered on Coyote as a creator and trickster, as well as stories of the world emerging from the ocean; their cosmology is deeply tied to the San Francisco Bay ecosystem—poets engaging with Ohlone myth should recognize the devastating impact of colonization on their cultural continuity and prioritize contemporary Ohlone voices in revitalization efforts rather than relying solely on early ethnographic records.
Also Known As
Costanoan
Skip to main content