The Tubatulabal language was traditionally spoken along the upper Kern River, northeast of Bakersfield. In pre-contact times, there may have been as many as 1000 speakers of Tubatulabal (Kroeber 1925). Today, there are less than a dozen first-language speakers (Hinton 1993).
Tubatulabal (sometimes written "Tübatulabal" or called "Pahkanapul") is a Uto-Aztecan language. The other languages in this family spoken in California are the Numic languages (Chemehuevi-Southern Paiute-Ute, Comanche, Kawaiisu, Mono, Northern Paiute, Panamint, and Shoshone) and the Takic languages (Cahuilla, Cupeño, Gabrielino, Juaneño, Kitanemuk, Luiseño, Serrano, and Tataviam).
Selected archival materials at Berkeley
- Voegelin, Charles F. 1935. Tübatulabal grammar. University of California Publications in American Anthropology and Ethnology 34: 55-190. [PDF]
- Voegelin, Charles F. 1935. Tübatulabal texts. University of California Publications in American Anthropology and Ethnology 34: 191-246. [PDF]
- Voegelin, C. F. 1958. Working dictionary of Tübatulabal. International Journal of American Linguistics 24: 221-228.