The languages of the Yuman family have very few speakers. The majority of the languages in this family are found in the state of Baja California Norte (apart from the other languages of this family which are found today only in California and Arizona in the U.S.). Cocopa is spoken in Sonora and also in the state of Arizona.
Some of the speakers of Tipai use the name Cochimi to refer to themselves; linguists use this name to refer to a group that is now extinct. There is another language in this family, a dialect of Tipai according to some linguists, spoken in Santa Catarina by a very small group, also referred to as Ko'al.
Intelligibility studies in these communities suggest that some of these languages are much more closely related to each other than some variants of Mixtec or Zapotec are related to each other.
The Summer Institute of Linguistics is not doing research on these languages in Mexico.
For more information
- The Yuman family is part of the Hokan stock
- Population statistics by language family
- Ethnologue listing