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Alternate Names: Yokuts; Yaudanchi; Yokuts (Yaudanchi); Yukol; General Yokuts Spoken in: USA Code: yok Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Brief Description: "Yokuts is a large complex of dialects, spoken aboriginally in the San Joaquin Valley of south-central California and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to the east. There were over 40 local varieties of Yokuts, each associated with a small independent community, often only a single village or close-knit group of villages. Although the classification is somewhat arbitrary, six emergent languages are usually distinguished, three of which (Palewyami, Buena Vista, and Gashowu) are extinct. Still spoken are: Tule-Kaweah, a cluster of dialects originally spoken in the Sierra Nevada foothills along the Tule and Kaweah Rivers, east of Porterville. Fewer than ten speakers of the Wukchumne (Wikchamni) dialect of Tule-Kaweah remain, most of them on the Tule River Reservation. Kings River, a cluster of dialects originally spoken in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Fresno. Half a dozen elderly speakers or semi-speakers of the Choinumne (Choynimni) dialect live in scattered locations in and around their traditional homeland. Valley Yokuts, a large complex of shallowly differentiated dialects spoken mainly in the San Joaquin Valley. There are speakers of at least three Valley Yokuts dialects, including up to 25 fluent and semi-fluent speakers of Yowlumne (Yawelmani) on the Tule River Reservation, a few semi-speakers of Chukchansi at the Picayune and Table Mountain Rancherias in the foothills northeast o Fresno, and a few speakers of the Tachi at the Santa Rosa Rancheria near Lemoore." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 25