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Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the unity of some of its component families has been disputed. Some of the problems in the comparative study of languages within the phylum are the result of their early extinction and limited documentation.
Yokuts, formerly known as Mariposa, is an endangered language family spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people. The speakers of Yokuts languages were severely affected by disease, missionaries, and the Gold Rush. While descendants of Yokuts speakers currently number in the thousands, all languages apart from Valley Yokuts are now extinct.
Utian is a family of Indigenous languages spoken in Northern California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages of the Utian language family. It has recently been argued that the Utian languages and Yokuts languages are sub-families of the Yok-Utian language family. Utian and Yokutsan have traditionally been considered part of the Penutian language phylum.
Valley Yokuts is a dialect cluster of the Yokutsan language family of California.
The Yokuts are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. Yokuts is both plural and singular; Yokut, while common, is erroneous. 'Yokut' should only be used when referring specifically to the Tachi Yokut Tribe of Lemoore. Some of their descendants prefer to refer to themselves by their respective tribal names; they reject the term Yokuts, saying that it is an exonym invented by English-speaking settlers and historians. Conventional sub-groupings include the Foothill Yokuts, Northern Valley Yokuts, and Southern Valley Yokuts.
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.
Yok-Utian is a proposed language family of California. It consists of the Yokuts language and the Utian language family.
The Chalon people are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone (Costanoan) people of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. Chalon is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone languages of the Utian family. Recent work suggests that Chalon may be transitional between the northern and southern groups of Ohlone languages.
The Tübatulabal are an indigenous people of Kern River Valley in the Sierra Nevada range of California. They may have been the first people to make this area their permanent home. Today many of them are enrolled in the Tule River Indian Tribe. They are descendants of the people of the Uto-Aztecan language group, separating from Shoshone people about 3000 years ago.
Klamath, also Klamath–Modoc and historically Lutuamian, is a Native American language spoken around Klamath Lake in what is now southern Oregon and northern California. It is the traditional language of the Klamath and Modoc peoples, each of whom spoke a dialect of the language. By 1998, only one native speaker remained, and by 2003, this last fluent Klamath speaker who was living in Chiloquin, Oregon, was 92 years old. As of 2006 there were no fluent native speakers of either the Klamath or Modoc dialects; however, as of 2019, revitalization efforts are underway with the goal of creating new speakers.
Tamcan or Tammukan was a local tribe of Delta Yokuts-speaking natives in the U.S. that once lived on the lower reaches of California's San Joaquin River in what is now eastern Contra Costa County and western San Joaquin County, California. The Tamcans were absorbed into the system of the Spanish missions in California in the early nineteenth century; they moved to Mission San José, near the shore of San Francisco Bay, between 1806 and 1811. At the mission, they and their descendants intermarried with speakers of the San Francisco Bay Ohlone, Plains Miwok, and Patwin Indian languages. Mission Indian survivors of these mixed groups gathered at Alisal, near Pleasanton in Contra Costa County, in the late nineteenth century.
Barbareño is one of the Chumashan languages, a group of Native American languages spoken almost exclusively in the area of Santa Barbara, California. The closely related Ineseño may have been a dialect of the same language. A dialect of the Barbareño language was also "spoken at San Emigdio near Buena Vista Lake" in the southern Central Valley. This dialect, called Emigdiano, "was heavily influenced by Buena Vista Yokuts." Barbareño lost its last known native speaker in 1965 with the death of Mary Yee. Both Barbareño and Ineseño are currently undergoing processes of language revitalization.
Buena Vista was a Yokuts language of California. It was spoken in at least two local varieties around Buena Vista Lake in Kern County, California," in the villages of Hometwoli, Loasau, Tuhohi, and Tulamni.
Southern Valley Yokuts is a dialect network within the Valley Yokuts division of the Yokutsan languages spoken in the Central Valley of California.
Chukchansi (Chuk'chansi) is a dialect of Valley Yokuts spoken in and around the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians, in the San Joaquin Valley of California, by the Chukchansi band of Yokuts. As of 2011, there were eight native semi-speakers.
Tulamni was a dialect of the Buena Vista Yokuts language spoken by the Yokuts around Buena Vista Lake, California.
Choynimni is a dialect of Kings River Yokuts historically spoken along the Kings River between Sanger and Mill Creek. The language is the best documented dialect of Kings River Yokuts.
Hometwoli was a dialect of Buena Vista Yokuts spoken in the southern portion of the Tulare Basin of California near Kern Lake.
Northern Valley Yokuts is a dialect network within the Valley Yokuts division of the Yokutsan languages spoken in the Central Valley of California. Among the languages belonging to the network are Chawchila, Nopṭinṭe, Kechayi, Dumna, Dalinchi, Toltichi, and Chukchansi. Of these, Kechayi, Dumna, Dalinchi, Toltichi, and Chukchansi are frequently grouped under the label Northern Hill dialects.
Yawelmani Yokuts is an endangered dialect of Southern Valley Yokuts historically spoken by the Yokuts living along the Kern River north of Kern Lake in the Central Valley of California. Today, most Yawelmani speakers live on or near the Tule River Reservation.
References
- 1 2 Victor Golla (2007), Atlas of the World's Languages, p. 21
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Palewyami Yokuts". Glottolog 3.0 . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
