Yokuts , formerly known as Mariposa , is an endangered language spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people . The speakers of Yokuts were severely affected by disease, missionaries , and the Gold Rush . While descendants of Yokuts speakers currently number in the thousands, all constituent dialects apart from Valley Yokuts are now extinct .
7-469: Tule–Kaweah was a major dialect of the Yokuts language of California, or possibly a distinct but closely related language. Wukchumni , the last surviving dialect, had only one native or fluent speaker, Marie Wilcox (both native and fluent), who compiled a dictionary of the language. “Marie's dictionary”, a short documentary by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, is about her dictionary. She also recorded an oral version of
14-422: 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,
21-561: A focus of much linguistic research. The Yokuts language consists of half a dozen primary dialects. An estimated forty linguistically distinct groups existed before Euro-American contact. Glottolog concludes that these dialects fall into 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
28-473: 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
35-635: 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
42-517: 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
49-407: The dictionary. Together with her daughter Jennifer, Marie Wilcox taught weekly classes to interested members of their tribe. Marie Wilcox died on September 25, 2021, rendering Tule–Kaweah extinct. There were three dialects of Tule–Kaweah, † Wukchumni (Wikchamni), † Yawdanchi ( a.k.a. Nutaa ), and † Bokninuwad . Yokuts language The Yawelmani dialect of Valley Yokuts has been
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