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The speech of the last two native speakers of Chochenyo was documented in the 1920s in the unpublished fieldnotes of the Bureau of American Ethnology linguist John Peabody Harrington.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.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, which (as of 2007)[2] 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.