Yurok (also Chillula, Mita, Pekwan, Rikwa, Sugon, Weitspek, Weitspekan) is an Algic language. It is the traditional language of the Yurok people of Del Norte County and Humboldt County on the far north coast of California, most of whom now speak English. The last known native speaker died in 2013. As of 2012, Yurok language classes were taught to high school students, and other revitalization efforts were expected to increase the population of speakers.
The standard reference on the Yurok language grammar is by R. H. Robins (1958).
Name
Concerning the etymology of Yurok ( Weitspekan), this below is from Campbell (1997):
History
Decline of the language began during the California Gold Rush, due to the influx of new settlers and the diseases they brought with them. Native American boarding schools initiated by the United States government with the intent of incorporating the native populations of America into mainstream American society increased the rate of decline of the language.
Current status
The program to revive Yurok has been lauded as the most successful language revitalization program in California. As of 2014, there are six schools in Northern California that teach Yurok - four high schools and two elementary schools. Rick Jordan, principal of Eureka High School, one of the schools with a Yurok Language Program, remarks on the impact that schools can have on the vitality of a language, "A hundred years ago, it was our organizations that were beating the language out of folks, and now we're trying to re-instill it – a little piece of something that is much larger than us".
The last known native, active speaker of Yurok, Archie Thompson, died March 26, 2013. "He was also the last of about 20 elders who helped revitalize the language over the last few decades, after academics in the 1990s predicted it would be extinct by 2010. He made recordings of the language that were archived by UC Berkeley linguists and the tribe, spent hours helping to teach Yurok in community and school classrooms, and welcomed apprentice speakers to probe his knowledge."
Linguists at UC Berkeley began the Yurok Language Project in 2001. Professor Andrew Garrett and Dr. Juliette Blevins collaborated with tribal elders on a Yurok dictionary that has been hailed as a national model. The Yurok Language Project has gone much more in depth than just a printed lexicon, however. The dictionary is available online and fully searchable. It is also possible to search an audio dictionary – a repository of audio clips of words and short phrases. For a more in depth study, there is a database of compiled texts where words and phrases can be viewed as part of a larger context.
As of February 2013, there are over 300 basic Yurok speakers, 60 with intermediate skills, 37 who are advanced, and 17 who are considered conversationally fluent. As of 2014, nine people are certified to teach Yurok in schools. Since Yurok, like many other Native American languages, uses a master-apprentice system to train up speakers in the language, having even nine certified teachers would not be possible without a piece of legislation passed in 2009 in the state of California that allows indigenous tribes the power to appoint their own language teachers.
Phonology
Vowels
Vowels are as follows:
Consonants
Consonants are as follows:
Notable is the lack of plain .
Yurok has an anticipatory vowel harmony system where underlying non-high vowels , , and are realized as if they precede an .
The glottalized approximants may be realized as creaky voice on the preceding vowel, a preceding glottal stop, or both. They are often devoiced when they occur at the end of a word.
Yurok has front-, central-, and back-closing diphthongs. The second element of the diphthongs is considered a consonant or semivowel. This is because Yurok diphthongs are falling diphthongs and behave similarly to nasal and approximates following a vowel and preceding a pause or voiceless non-glottalized consonant.
All Yurok syllables begin with a consonant and contain at least one vowel. Here are some examples of the different kinds of syllable structure:
V:V can only be or and is signaled by a change in pitch between the vowels.
Morphology
Yurok morphological processes include prefixation, infixation, inflection, vowel harmony, ablaut, consonantal alternation, and reduplication.
Prefixation and infixation occur in nominals and verbals, and occasionally in other classes, although infixation occurs most frequently in verbals.