Yahi is an extinct dialect of Yana formerly spoken in the upper Sacramento Valley area, roughly in the area between Mill Creek and Deer Creek. It is grouped with the Southern forms of the Yana languages which, together with Central and Northern Yana are an isolated group of languages, with possible connections with Hokan. Yana is well known as having been the language of Ishi, the last surviving Yana Indian, who worked with anthropologists to make a record of the language and culture.
The last documented speaker of Yahi was a man called Ishi who caused a scientific stir when he made contact with the outside world in 1911, long after the Yahi had been assumed to be extinct. Together with the language, he died in 1916.[1]
Yahi distinguishes male and female forms with male forms, frequently marked with the suffix -na, generally longer than female forms. Some examples are:[2]
^Parkvall, Mikael (2008). Limits of language: almost everything you didn't know you didn't know about language and languages. Wilsonville, Or: Battlebridge Publications. ISBN978-1-59028-198-7.
^Kroeber, Theodora; Gannett, Lewis (1961). Ishi in two worlds: a biography of the last wild Indian in North America. Berkeley Los Angeles: University of Califronia press. ISBN978-0-520-00675-1.
^Kroeber, T. Ishi in two worlds Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984
^Sapir, E., Swadesh. M., Haas, M. Yana Dictionary University of California Press, 1960
