Linguistically, Chochenyo,
Tamyen and
Ramaytush are thought to have been dialects of a single language, but Tamyen and Ramaytush are very poorly attested. The speech of the last two native speakers of Chochenyo was documented in the 1920s in the unpublished fieldnotes of the
Bureau of American Ethnology linguist
John Peabody Harrington. The final native speaker of the language was José Guzmán who died in 1934 in
Niles, California. presents in Chochenyo at the
San Francisco Public Library. The
Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, which (as of 2007) is petitioning for U.S. federal recognition, has made efforts to revive the language. As of 2004, "the Chochenyo database being developed by the tribe ... [contained] from 1,000 to 2,000 basic words." During the
canonization of
Saint Junípero Serra on September 23, 2015, the first reading at Mass was read in Chochenyo by
Vincent Medina. ==Phonology==