Wukchumni dialect
Yokuts language
Wukchumni or Wikchamni is a dialect of Tule-Kaweah Yokuts that was historically spoken by the Wukchumni people of the east fork of the Kaweah River of California.
As of 2014, Marie Wilcox (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", where few elderly speakers are present, 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.
Possibility of more native speakers
Due to Wilcox's efforts, at least three people are fluent in the language.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wukchumni dialect” 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.