The Pomo are a Native American people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small group, the Tceefoka, lived in the vicinity of present-day Stonyford, Colusa County, where they were separated from the majority of Pomo lands by Yuki and Wintuan speakers.
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families spoken mainly in California, Arizona, and Baja California.
The Achumawi language is the indigenous language spoken by the Pit River people in the northeast corner of present-day California. The term Achumawi is an anglicization of the name of the Fall River band, ajúmmááwí, from ajúmmá "river". Originally there were nine bands, with dialect differences primarily between upriver and downriver, demarcated by the Big Valley mountains east of the Fall River valley.
Numic is the northernmost branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, Snake River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word Numic comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for “person”, which reconstructs to Proto-Numic as. For example, in the three Central Numic languages and the two Western Numic languages it is. In Kawaiisu it is and in Colorado River, and.
The Pomoan, or Pomo, languages are a small family of seven languages indigenous to northern California spoken by the Pomo people, whose ancestors lived in the valley of the Russian River and the Clear Lake basin. Four languages are extinct, and all surviving languages except Kashaya have fewer than ten speakers.
Mono is a Native American language of the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, the ancestral language of the Mono people. Mono consists of two dialects, Eastern and Western. The name "Monachi" is commonly used in reference to Western Mono and "Owens Valley Paiute" in reference to Eastern Mono. In 1925, Alfred Kroeber estimated that Mono had 3,000 to 4,000 speakers. As of 1994, only 37 elderly people spoke Mono as their first language. It is classified as critically endangered by UNESCO. It is spoken in the southern Sierra Nevada, the Mono Basin, and the Owens Valley of central-eastern California. Mono is most closely related to Northern Paiute; these two are classified as the Western group of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
The Lytton Band of Pomo Indians is a federally recognized tribe of Pomo Native Americans. They were recognized in the late 1980s, as lineal descendants of the two families who lived at the Lytton Rancheria in Healdsburg, California from 1937 to about 1960. The tribe now has around 275 enrolled members. It has a casino in San Pablo, California, and has proposed to build housing for tribe members, plus a winery and a hotel, just west of Windsor, California, in Sonoma County.
Eastern Pomo, also known as Clear Lake Pomo, is a nearly extinct Pomoan language spoken around Clear Lake in Lake County, California by one of the Pomo peoples.
Kashaya is the critically endangered language of the Kashia band of the Pomo people. The Pomoan languages have been classified as part of the Hokan language family. The name Kashaya corresponds to words in neighboring languages with meanings such as "skillful" and "expert gambler". It is spoken by the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of the Stewarts Point Rancheria.
Northern Pomo is a critically endangered Pomoan language, formerly spoken by the indigenous Pomo people in what is now called California. The speakers of Northern Pomo were traditionally those who lived in the northern and largest area of the Pomoan territory. Other communities near to the Pomo were the Coast Yuki, the Huchnom, and the Athabascan. Ukiah High School first began offering Northern Pomo in the Fall 2020.
The Yuki–Wappo or Yukian languages are a small language family of western California consisting of two distantly related languages, both now extinct.
The Yana language is an extinct language that was formerly spoken by the Yana people, who lived in north-central California between the Feather and Pit rivers in what is now the Shasta and Tehama counties. The last speaker of the southernmost dialect, which is called Yahi, was Ishi, who died in 1916. When the last fluent speaker(s) of the other dialects died is not recorded. Yana is fairly well documented, mostly by Edward Sapir.
The hitch is a cyprinid fish endemic to central California, and was once very common. The common name may derive from a Pomoan word for this species. It is the only species in the monospecific genus Lavinia.
The Vanji language, also spelt Vanchi and Vanži, is an extinct Iranian language, one of the areal group of Iranian languages. It was spoken in the Vanj River valley in what is now the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan.
Southern Pomo is one of seven mutually unintelligible Pomoan languages which were spoken by the Pomo people in Northern California along the Russian River and Clear Lake. The Pomo languages have been grouped together with other so-called Hokan languages. Southern Pomo is unique among the Pomo languages in preserving, perhaps, the greatest number of syllables inherited from Proto-Pomo.
Northeastern Pomo, also known as Salt Pomo, is a Pomoan language of Northern California. There are no living fluent speakers. It was spoken along Stony Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River. Northeastern was one of seven mutually unintelligible Pomoan languages spoken in Northern California. Unlike the other six Pomoan languages, Northeastern Pomo was not spoken in an area immediately contiguous with any other Pomoan-speaking area. Northeastern Pomo speakers were ringed by speakers of Yuki, Nomlaki, and Patwin; Yuki is unrelated to Pomoan or Nomlaki and Patwin, both of which are within the Wintu language family.
Southeastern Pomo, also known by the dialect names Elem Pomo, Koi Nation Lower Lake Pomo and Sulfur Bank Pomo, is one of seven distinct languages comprising the Pomoan language family of Northern California. In the language's prime, Southeastern Pomo was spoken primarily in an area surrounding East Lake and Lower Lake, in Lake County, along the eastern coast of Clear Lake, in Northern California by the Pomo people. Southeastern Pomos inhabited an area on the northern bank of Cache Creek, and the Sulfur Bank Rancheria. Dialectal differences between the two sites of habitation seem to be minimal, and may be limited to a small number of lexical differences.
The Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians is a federally recognized tribe of Pomo people, an Indigenous people of California. It has a reservation near Geyserville, California, in Sonoma County, where it operates the River Rock Casino Resort.
Abraham "Abe" Meyer Halpern was a linguist and anthropologist who specialized in Native American Languages. In the wake of World War II he initiated a second career focusing on United States foreign policy, especially in regard to China. Late in life he resumed studying and publishing on the languages of California.
Patwin (Patween) is a critically endangered Wintuan language of Northern California. As of 2021, there was one documented first language speaker of Patwin. As of 2010, Patwin language classes were taught at the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation tribal school.
