The Yuman–Cochimí languages are a family of languages spoken in

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

, northern Sonora, southern

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 ...

, and western

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

. Cochimí is no longer spoken as of the late 18th century, and most other Yuman languages are threatened.

Classification

There are approximately a dozen Yuman languages. The dormant

Cochimí The Cochimí were the indigenous inhabitants of the central part of the Baja California peninsula, from El Rosario in the north to San Javier in the south. Information on Cochimí customs and beliefs has been preserved in the brief observati ...

, attested from the 18th century, was identified after the rest of the family had been established, and was found to be more divergent. The resulting family was therefore called ''Yuman–Cochimí'', with ''Yuman'' being the extra-Cochimí languages. *

† (Northern Cochimí and Southern Cochimí may have been distinct languages) * Kiliwa * Core Yuman ** Delta–California Yuman ***

Ipai The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...

(a.k.a. 'Iipay, Northern Diegueño) *** Kumeyaay (a.k.a. Central Diegueño, Campo, Kamia) ***

Tipai The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...

(a.k.a. Southern Diegueño, Huerteño, Ku'ahl) *** Cocopah (a.k.a. Cucapá; cf. Kahwan, Halyikwamai) ** River Yuman ***

Quechan The Quechan (or Yuma) ( Quechan: ''Kwatsáan'' 'those who descended') are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the Mexican border. Despite th ...

(a.k.a. Yuma) *** Maricopa (a.k.a. Pii-Paash; cf. also Halchidhoma) *** Mojave ** Pai ***

Yavapai The Yavapai are a Native American tribe in Arizona. Historically, the Yavapai – literally “people of the sun” (from ''Enyaava'' “sun” + ''Paay'' “people”) – were divided into four geographical bands who identified as separate, i ...

*** Havasupai-Hualapai (a.k.a. Northern Yuman) **** Hualapai dialect (a.k.a. Walapai) **** Havasupai dialect *** Paipai (a.k.a. Akwa'ala; possibly distinct from the Upland Yuman language only at the dialect level) Cochimí is now dormant. Cucapá is the Spanish name for the Cocopa. Diegueño is the Spanish name for Ipai–Kumeyaay–Tipai, now often referred to collectively as ''Kumeyaay''. Upland Yuman consists of several mutually intelligible dialects spoken by the politically distinct Yavapai, Hualapai, and Havasupai.

Proto-language

Urheimat

Mauricio Mixco of the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

points to a relative lack of reconstructible Proto-Yuman terms for aquatic phenomena as evidence against a coastal, lacustrine, or riverine

Urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...

Reconstruction

Proto-Yuman reconstructions by Mixco (1978):Mixco, Mauricio J. 1978. Cochimí and proto-Yuman: lexical and syntactic evidence for a new language family in Lower California. (Anthropological Papers / University of Utah, 101.) Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. :

References

Bibliography

* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America''. Oxford University Press. * Goddard, Ives. (1996). "Introduction". In ''Languages'', edited by Ives Goddard, pp. 1–16. ''

Handbook of North American Indians The ''Handbook of North American Indians'' is a series of edited scholarly and reference volumes in Native American studies, published by the Smithsonian Institution beginning in 1978. Planning for the handbook series began in the late 1960s and ...

'', William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Vol. 17. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. * Kendall, Martha B. (1983). "Yuman languages". In ''Southwest'', edited by Alfonso Ortiz, pp. 4–12. ''

'', William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Vol. 10. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. * Langdon, Margaret. (1990). "Diegueño: how many languages?" In ''Proceedings of the 1990 Hokan–Penutian Language Workshop'', edited by James E. Redden, pp. 184–190. Occasional Papers in Linguistics No. 15. University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Mixco, Mauricio J. (2006). "The indigenous languages". In ''The Prehistory of Baja California: Advances in the Archaeology of the Forgotten Peninsula'', edited by Don Laylander and Jerry D. Moore, pp. 24–41.

External links

Comparative Yuman Swadesh vocabulary lists
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yuman-Cochimi Languages Language families Hokan languages Indigenous languages of California Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest Indigenous languages of Mexico Indigenous languages of the Southwestern United States Indigenous culture of Aridoamerica