Yurok language
Algic language
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, Archie Thompson, died in 2013. As of 2022, 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 (a.k.a. Weitspekan), this below is from Campbell (1997):
Yurok is from Karuk yúruk meaning literally 'downriver'. The Yurok traditional name for themselves is Puliklah (Hinton 1994:157), from pulik 'downstream' + -la 'people of', thus equivalent in meaning to the Karuk name by which they came to be known in English (Victor Golla, personal communication).(Campbell 1997:401, notes #131 & 132)
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 and 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.
Status as of 2014
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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yurok language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.