Yurok (also Chillula, Mita, Pekwan, Rikwa, Sugon, Weitspek, Weitspekan) is an Algic language.

[1] As of 2012, Yurok language classes were taught to high school students, and other revitalization efforts were expected to increase the population of speakers.

The Yurok traditional name for themselves is Puliklah (Hinton 1994:157), from pulik 'downstream' + -la 'people of', thus equivalent in meaning to the Karuk name by which they came to be known in English (Victor Golla, personal communication).

(Campbell 1997:401, notes #131 & 132)Decline of the language began during the California Gold Rush, due to the influx of new settlers and the diseases they brought with them and Native American boarding schools initiated by the United States government with the intent of incorporating the native populations of America into mainstream American society increased the rate of decline of the language.

He made recordings of the language that were archived by UC Berkeley linguists and the tribe, spent hours helping to teach Yurok in community and school classrooms, and welcomed apprentice speakers to probe his knowledge.

Professor Andrew Garrett and Dr. Juliette Blevins collaborated with tribal elders on a Yurok dictionary that has been hailed as a national model.

For a more in-depth study, there is a database of compiled texts where words and phrases can be viewed as part of a larger context.

[8] As of February 2013, there are over 300 basic Yurok speakers, 60 with intermediate skills, 37 who are advanced, and 17 who are considered conversationally fluent.

Here are some examples of the different kinds of syllable structure:[4] V:V can only be /oːo/ or /uːu/ and is signaled by a change in pitch between the vowels.

Yurok morphological processes include prefixation, infixation, inflection, vowel harmony, ablaut, consonantal alternation,[clarification needed] and reduplication.

Vowel harmony occurs for prefixes, infixes, and inflections, depending on the vocalic and consonantal structure of the word stem.

Reduplication occurs mostly on verb stems but occasionally for nouns and can connote repetition, plurality, etc.

[15] As in many indigenous languages of the Americas, Yurok verbs do not code tense through inflection.