Yuki, also known as Ukomno'm, is an

extinct language An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of r ...

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 ...

, formerly spoken by the Yuki people. The Yuki are the original inhabitants of the Eel River area and the Round Valley Reservation of northern California. Yuki ceased to be used as an everyday language in the early 20th century and its last native speaker, Arthur Anderson, died in 1983. Yuki is generally thought to be distantly related to the Wappo language. Revitalization efforts are currently underway, and the language is taught at the grade-school level (alongside Wailaki) at the Round Valley Reservation.

Classification

Yuki consisted of three dialects, from east to west: Round Valley Yuki, Huchnom (Clear Lake Yuki) and Coast Yuki. These were at least partially

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

, but are sometimes counted as distinct languages. These languages are categorized as (Northern) Yukian within the Yuki–Wappo family, which also includes the distant Wappo language. It is thought that the ancestor of the Yukian languages diverged from Wappo around 1500 . The three Yukian languages diverged from each other over the last one thousand years, while dialectal variations in Wappo are even more recent. The most likely catalyst or, at least, influence on the separation of Yukian and Wappo was the expansion of the

Pomo The Pomo are a Indigenous peoples of California, Native American people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to ...

, leading to ''pomoization'' of the Wappo language and physical separation between the Yuki and the Wappo tribes.

Phonology

An alveolar stop /t/ is an apico-alveolar stop articulated as ̺

Grammar

An extensive reference grammar of Yuki was published in 2016 and is based primarily on the texts and other notes recorded by Alfred L. Kroeber from Yuki speaker Ralph Moore in the first decade of the 20th century as well as elicited material recorded from other speakers later in the 20th century. This grammar also contains sketches of Huchnom and Coast Yuki based on the notes of Sydney Lamb and John Peabody Harrington, respectively.

Vocabulary

Yuki had an

octal Octal (base 8) is a numeral system with eight as the base. In the decimal system, each place is a power of ten. For example: : \mathbf_ = \mathbf \times 10^1 + \mathbf \times 10^0 In the octal system, each place is a power of eight. For ex ...

(base-8) counting system, as the Yuki keep count by using the four spaces between their fingers rather than the fingers themselves. Yuki also had an extensive vocabulary for the plants of

Mendocino County Mendocino County (; ''Mendocino'', Spanish language, Spanish for "of Antonio de Mendoza, Mendoza") is a County (United States), county located on the North Coast (California), North Coast of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United S ...

, California.

References

External links

*
Northern Yukian language
overview at the

Survey of California and Other Indian Languages The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...

OLAC resources in and about the Yuki language
Indigenous languages of California Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 20th century Yuki–Wappo languages {{IndigenousAmerican-lang-stub