Wukchumni or Wikchamni is an extinct dialect of Tule-Kaweah Yokuts that was historically spoken by the

Wukchumni The Wukchumni () are a Yokuts tribe of California with about 200 members, residing on the Tule River Indian Tribe of the Tule River Reservation, Tule River Reservation. 3000 years ago, they broke off from the main Yokuts group and settled in the re ...

people of the east fork of the

Kaweah River The Kaweah River is a river draining the southern Sierra Nevada in Tulare County, California in the United States. Fed primarily by high elevation snowmelt along the Great Western Divide, the Kaweah begins as four forks in Sequoia National Pa ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

As of 2014,

Marie Wilcox Marie Desma Wilcox (November 24, 1933 – September 25, 2021) Als, October 9, 2021. was a Native American who was the last native speaker of Wukchumni, a dialect of Tule-Kaweah, which is a Yokutsan indigenous language spoken by the Tule-Kawe ...

(1933–2021) was the last remaining native speaker of the language. There are efforts at revitalization, and Wilcox completed a comprehensive Wukchumni dictionary; at her death there were at least three fluent speakers.

Status

In 2019, Wukchumni was categorized as 8a or "moribund" on the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. It became extinct upon the death of its last native speaker, Marie Wilcox, in 2021.

Revitalization efforts

In the early 2000s, Marie Wilcox, aided by her daughter Jennifer Malone, began compiling a Wukchumni dictionary. The work was copyrighted in 2019, but has not been published. Wilcox and Malone held classes teaching beginner and intermediate Wukchumni to interested tribal members; Malone continues this teaching at Owens Valley Career Development Center. Efforts to revive Wukchumni have additionally been organized through the

Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program The Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program is a strategy used in language revitalization, in which committed language learners (apprentices) work with fluent speakers (mentors) to "create their own oral language-immersive context through daily ...

Possibility of more native speakers

Due to Wilcox's efforts, at least three people are fluent in the language. Destiny Treglown, Marie Wilcox's great-granddaughter, is raising her child, Oliver, as a Wukchumni speaker. If he reaches fluency, he will become the first native speaker of the language in four generations.

Phonology

The following tables are based on Gamble (1978).

Consonants

Allophones of include .

Vowels

A long vowel can be lowered to when occurring before an . The central vowels /ɨ/ and /ə/ are partially rounded. All phonetic short vowel allophones include .

References

External links

English/Wukchumni dictionary
{{Penutian languages Yokutsan languages 2021 disestablishments in California Indigenous languages of California Extinct languages of North America