[2] Cocopah is considered an endangered language, with fewer than 400 speakers at the turn of the 21st century.

It was not until the 1970s that a written language was developed, when a scholar decided to approach this task for a dissertation.

Although the creation of an alphabet was useful, the original proved to be less than ideal, and so a new one was developed by the tribe in the early 2000s.

In turn, the tribe developed new words to attribute to modern objects that did not exist in the ancient language.

The Mexican-based Cocopah use an orthography that was designed by the INALI, an organization that examines and protects the rights of endangered languages.