Key facts
- Native to
- United States
- Region
- Northwestern California
- Ethnicity
- Yurok
- Extinct
- 2013, with the death of Archie Thompson
- Revival
- 1990s - 350 speakers with some knowledge, 35 fluent L2 speakers as of 2020
- Language family
- Algic Yurok
- Writing system
- Latin , Unifon (historically)
- Iso 639 3
- yur
- Glottolog
- yuro1248
- Elp
- Yurok
via Wikipedia infobox
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Welcome sign with Yurok greeting, "Aiy-yu-kwee'" 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).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Yurok” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.