Northern Yukian language

Not to be confused with Yuki language (Bolivia).

Northern Yukian, also known as Ukomnoʼm, is an extinct language of California, formerly spoken by the Yuki people.^[4] 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.^{[1][disputed (for: other sources indicate another speaker who died in 1990)  – discuss]} Northern Yukian is generally thought to be distantly related to the Wappo language.

Northern Yukian
Ukomnoʼm
Native to	California, United States
Region	Eel River area
Ethnicity	Yuki people
Extinct	1983, with the death of Arthur Anderson[1]
Revival	21st century[2]
Language family	Yuki–Wappo Northern Yukian
Dialects	Huchnom Round Valley Coast
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yuk (Yuki proper)
Linguist List	yuk Yuki proper
	qdw Coast Yuki
	qiq Huchnom
Glottolog	yuki1243
Yuki is classified as Extinct by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. [3]

Revitalization efforts are currently underway, and the language is taught at the grade-school level (alongside Wailaki) at the Round Valley Reservation.^[2]

Classification

Northern Yukian 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, but are sometimes counted as distinct languages.^[5]

These languages are categorized as Northern Yukian within the Yuki–Wappo (Yukian) family, which also includes the distant Wappo language. It is thought that the ancestor of the Yukian languages diverged from Wappo around 1500 bce.^[6]

The three Northern 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 Northern Yukian and Wappo was the expansion of the Pomo, leading to pomoization of the Wappo language and physical separation between the Yuki and the Wappo tribes.^[7]

Phonology

Consonants^[8]

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Plain	p	t̪	t̺			k	ʔ
	Ejective	pʼ	t̪ʼ	t̺ʼ			kʼ
Affricate	Plain				t͡ʃ
	Ejective				t͡ʃʼ
Fricative	Plain			s	ʃ			h
	Ejective			sʼ
Nasal	Plain	m		n
	Glottal	ˀm		ˀn
Approximant	Plain	w		l		j
	Glottal	ˀw		ˀl		ˀj

An alveolar stop /t/ is an apico-alveolar stop articulated as [t̺].

Vowels^[8]

	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː			u	uː
Mid	e	eː	ə̃		o	oː
Open			a	aː

Grammar

An extensive reference grammar of the Yuki variety 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.^[8]

Vocabulary

Yuki had an octal (base-8) counting system, as the Yuki keep count by using the four spaces between their fingers rather than the fingers themselves.^[9] Yuki also had an extensive vocabulary for the plants of Mendocino County, California.^[10]