[3] Most of the speakers today live at the community of Hope Vale, about 46 kilometres (29 mi) from Cooktown.

The element guugu and the practice of naming based on some distinctive word is found in many other languages.

[5][6] Missionaries used the coastal dialect to translate hymns and Bible stories, so some of its words now have religious associations that the inland equivalents lack.

[7] In 1770, Guugu Yimithirr became the first Australian Aboriginal language to be written down when Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook and his crew recorded words while their ship, the HM Bark Endeavour, was being repaired after having run aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef.

Among the words recorded were kangooroo or kanguru (IPA: /ɡaŋuru/), meaning a large black or grey kangaroo, which would become the general English term for all kangaroos, and dhigul (transcribed by Banks as Je-Quoll), the name of the quoll.

However, there is at least one word which, for older speakers, is pronounced with a word-initial retroflex: run, which is [ɖudaː] or [ɖuɖaː].

[citation needed] As of June 2020[update], only about half of the 1,400 Guugu Yimithirr people speak the language, with mostly only grandparents being fluent speakers.

Hope Vale elders are helping to create video tutorials on teaching Guugu Yimithirr, which are being uploaded to YouTube, while the local school, Hope Vale Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy, has a language program in its curriculum.