Yokuts Language

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.

Yokuts
Mariposa
Region	San Joaquin Valley, California
Ethnicity	Yokuts
Native speakers	50 (2007) Including semispeakers
Language family	Yok-Utian Yokuts
Dialects	Palewyami † Buena Vista † Tule–Kaweah † Gashowu † Kings River † Valley Yokuts
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yok
Glottolog	yoku1255
ELP	Yokuts
Pre-contact distribution of the Yokuts language

The Yawelmani dialect of Valley Yokuts has been a focus of much linguistic research.

Yokuts consists of half a dozen languages. An estimated forty linguistically distinct groups existed before Euro-American contact.

 

Glottolog finds at least four distinct languages: Palewyami Yokuts, Buena Vista Yokuts, Northern Yokuts, Tule-Kaweah Yokuts.

Almost all Yokuts dialects are extinct, as noted above. Those that are still spoken are endangered.

Until recent years, Choinimni, Wikchamni, Chukchansi, Kechayi, Tachi and Yawelmani all had a few fluent speakers and a variable number of partial speakers. Choynimni went extinct in 2017. Wikchamni, Chukchansi, Tachi, and Yawelmani were being taught to at least a few children during the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Chukchansi is now a written language, with its own alphabet developed on a federal grant. Chukchansi also has a phrase book and dictionary that are partially completed. In May 2012, the Linguistics Department of Fresno State University received a $1 million grant to compile a Chukchansi dictionary and grammar texts, and to "provide support for scholarships, programs, and efforts to assemble native texts and create a curriculum for teaching the language so it can be brought back into social and ritual use."

Yokuts is a key member in the proposed Penutian language stock. Some linguists consider most relationships within Penutian to be undemonstrated (cf. Campbell 1997). Others consider a genetic relationship between Yokuts, Utian, Maiduan, Wintuan, and a number of Oregon languages to be definite (cf. DeLancey and Golla 1997). Regardless of higher-order disagreement, Callaghan (1997) provides strong evidence uniting Yokuts and the Utian languages as branches of a Yok-Utian language family.

The term "Delta Yokuts" has recently been introduced in lieu of the longer "Far Northern Valley Yokuts" for the dialect spoken by the people in the present Stockton and Modesto vicinities of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, California, prior to their removal to Mission San Jose between 1810 and 1827. Of interest, Delta Yokuts contains a large number of words with no cognates in any of the other dialects, or for that matter in the adjacent Utian languages, although its syntax is typically Northern Valley Yokuts. This anomaly has led Whistler (cited by Golla 2007) to suggest, "The vocabulary distinctive of some of the Delta Yokuts dialects may reflect substratal influence from pre-proto-Yokuts or from an extinct Yok-Utian language." Golla suggests that a "pre-proto-Yokuts" homeland was in the Great Basin, citing a rich plant and animal vocabulary for a dry environment and a close connection between Yokuts basketry styles and those of prehistoric central Nevada.

Proto-Yokuts reconstructions from Whistler and Golla (1986):

gloss	Proto-Yokuts
acorn	*pʰutʰuʂ
beaver	*t’ɨːpɨkʰ ~ *ʈ’ɨːpɨkʰ
blood	*hɨːpa-ʔ
bone	*c’iy
child	*witʰip
child (diminutive)	*wicʰip
coyote	*kʰay’iw
eight	*mun’us
eye	*sasa-ʔ
fingernail	*xiːsix
fire	*ʔoʂitʰ
fish	*lopʰiʈʰ
flea	*p’aːk’il
friend	*noːcʰi
head louse	*tʰihiʈʰ
heart	*ʔuʂik’
horn	*ɨʂɨl’
mountain	*lomitʰ
mouth	*sama-ʔ
north	*xosim
nose	*ʈʰɨŋɨk’
shaman	*ʔaŋʈʰiw
skunk	*cʰox
sky	*ʈʰipʰin
star	*c’ayatas
string	*c’ikiy
tears	*maŋal
three	*ʂoːpʰin
two	*poŋiy
water	*ʔilik’

• Yokuts people

 

Wiktionary has a list of reconstructed forms at Appendix:Proto-Yokuts reconstructions

• Yokuts^[usurped]
• Yokuts languages fonts, Languagegeek.com
• Yokuts (Northern Foothill): Lord's prayer
• Chawchila metathesis
• Native Tribes, Groups, Language Families and Dialects of California in 1770 Archived 2011-04-30 at the Wayback Machine (map after Kroeber)
• Yokuts languages language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• "OLAC resources in and about the Yokuts language". Retrieved 2012-07-30.
• "General Yokuts – California Language Archive". Retrieved 2012-07-30.