Chukchansi (Chuk'chansi) is a dialect of Foothill and

Valley Yokuts Valley Yokuts is a dialect cluster of the Yokutsan language family of California. Chukchansi, which is still spoken natively, has language classes and a preschool for children. It is also taught at a local elementary school. Though there are no ...

spoken in and around the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians, in the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, by the Chukchansi band of

Yokuts The Yokuts (previously known as MariposasPowell, 1891:90–91.) 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 ...

. As of 2011, there were eight native speakers.

Preservation efforts

In May 2012, the Linguistics Department of

Fresno State University California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) is a public university in Fresno, California. It is one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. The university had a fall 2020 enrollment of 25,341 students. It offers bache ...

received a $1 million grant to compile a Chuckchansi 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." The five-year grant was provided by the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians from funds generated by the Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino, and is expected to speed existing volunteer efforts by CSU Fresno faculty to document and teach the language. However, the grant has also been criticized in connection with recent

disenrollment In the United States, tribal disenrollment is a process by which a Native American individual loses citizenship or the right to belong within a Native American tribe. Belonging in Native nations, which was historically a matter of kinship, ha ...

s of Chuckchansi tribal members. Recordings of the language were made by

Sydney Lamb Sydney MacDonald Lamb (born May 4, 1929 in Denver, Colorado) is an American linguist and professor at Rice University, whose stratificational grammar is a significant alternative theory to Chomsky's transformational grammar. He has speciali ...

between 1953-1957. Efforts at documentation of Chukchansi have also been attempted using the Phraselator, a handheld recording device developed for military purposes. "When a person speaks into the device in English, it responds with the Chukchansi translation." However, as of 2007, these devices were too expensive to be widely distributed. Chukchansi classes have been taught at the elementary school in Coarsegold, CA since 2008. As of 2012, Chukchansi classes are available for children and adults. The Native American Coffee Company's first coffee shop, which opened in Coarsegold in 2012, plans to translate the names of its coffee drinks into Chukchansi. Preservation of the language has evoked strong feelings. Tribal Chairman Reggie Lewis emphasized the need to "preserve, protect, and revitalize our cultural identity and traditions." One tribal member, who put it more directly, said, "When he United Statesbegan the genocide of Native American communities, the reason they allowed us to sign our treaties was because we had a language ... Generations of our elders went through drought and atrocities; the core of our language is our identity," adding that she was encouraged by the fact that "non-native speakers in the community come to learn the language."

Phonology

The following tables are based on Collord's 1968 grammar.

Consonants

sound is borrowed from other languages. is generally high-tongued after front vowels, and is slightly lowered elsewhere.

Vowels

References

External links