Mary Yee facts for kids

Mary Joachina Yee (born Mary Joachina Ygnacio Rowe; 1897–1965) was a very important Chumash linguist. She was the very last person to speak the Barbareño language as her first language. The Barbareño language is part of the Chumashan languages family. These languages were once spoken by the Chumash people in southern California.

Mary Yee's Life Story

Mary Yee was born in 1897. Her birthplace was an adobe house near Santa Barbara, California. This house was also where her grandmother lived. In the late 1890s, only a few children grew up speaking any of the Chumash languages. Mary was one of these special children. She learned and remembered many old Chumash stories.

Working with Linguists

When Mary Yee was in her fifties, she started helping to study and record her language. For many years, she worked closely with a linguist named John Peabody Harrington. Harrington had also worked with Mary's mother, Lucretia García, and her grandmother, Luisa Ignacio. Mary and Harrington often wrote letters to each other in the Chumash language.

After she retired in 1954, Mary Yee worked with Harrington almost every day. She also worked with another linguist, Madison S. Beeler. Through all this work, Mary became a linguist herself. She learned to analyze how words were built and how they changed.

Books and Films

Mary Yee's life story is featured in a documentary film. It is called 6 Generations: A Chumash Family History (2010). Her daughter, Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, helped write this film. After Mary Yee passed away, a children's book was published. It was called The Sugar Bear Story (2005). Her daughter, Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, also illustrated this book.

See Also

• List of last known speakers of languages