The Serran or Serrano-Gabrielino languages are a branch of the
Uto-Aztecan language family
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...
that comprises the
Serrano language
The Serrano language (Serrano: ''Maarrênga'twich'') is a language in the Serran branch of the Uto-Aztecan family spoken by the Serrano people of Southern California. The language is closely related to Tongva, Tataviam, Kitanemuk and Vanyume. ...
, extinct
Kitanemuk language
The Kitanemuk are an indigenous people of California. They traditionally lived in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley area of the western Mojave Desert of southern California, United States. Today some Kitanemuk people are enrolled in ...
(Serran proper), and
Tongva
The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...
, all indigenous to southern California. The branch has been considered to be part of the
Takic subgroup, but there is doubt about the validity of Takic as a genetic unit, the similarities between the languages classed as Takic possibly being due primarily to borrowing.
[Hill, J. H. (2011). Subgrouping in Uto-Aztecan. Language Dynamics and Change, 1(2), 241-278.]
References
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Northern Uto-Aztecan languages
Indigenous languages of California