Utian (also Miwok–Costanoan, previously Mutsun) is a family of indigenous languages spoken in

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The

Miwok The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, who traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family. The word ' ...

and

Ohlone The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the ...

peoples both spoke languages of the Utian language family. It has recently been argued that the Utian languages and Yokuts languages are sub-families of the Yok-Utian language family ( Callaghan 1997, 2001; Golla 2007:76-77). Utian and Yokutsan have traditionally been considered part of the

Penutian Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian st ...

language phylum (Goddard 1996:313-319; Mithun 1999; Shipley 1978:82-85). All Utian languages are severely

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

References

* Callaghan, Catherine. (1997). Evidence for Yok-Utian. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''63'', pages 18–64. * Callaghan, Catherine. (2001). More evidence for Yok-Utian: A reanalysis of the Dixon and Kroeber sets ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''67'' (3), pages 313-346. * Callaghan, Catherine. (2014).
Proto-Utian Grammar and Dictionary: with notes on Yokuts
'. Trends in Linguistics Documentation 31. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. * Goddard, Ives. (1996). "The Classification of the Native Languages of North America." In ''Languages'', Ives Goddard, ed., pp. 290–324. Handbook of North American Indians Vol. 17, W. C. Sturtevant, general ed. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. . * Golla, Victor. (2007). "Linguistic Prehistory" in ''California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity'', pp. 71–82. Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar, editors. New York: Altamira Press. . * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Shipley, William F. (1978). ''Native Languages of California'', in ''Handbook of North American Indians'', Vol. 8 (California). William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. / 0160045754, pages 80–90.

External links

(map after Kroeber)
Central Sierra Miwok Dictionary
Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians
Southern Sierra Miwok Dictionary
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Utian Languages Language families Indigenous languages of California Yok-Utian languages fr:Langues miwok

See also

References

External links