Wiyot language

Wiyot is an Algic language that was spoken by the Wiyot people of Humboldt Bay in northwestern California. Along with the neighboring Yurok language, it was first identified as a relative of the Algonquian languages by Edward Sapir in 1913, a claim that faced decades of scholarly dispute known as the Ritwan controversy before gaining wide acceptance by the 1950s; the term Algic itself was coined to cover the Algonquian languages together with Wiyot and Yurok, reflecting their confirmed genetic relationship despite the enormous geographic distance separating them from other Algonquian speakers. The language's last native speaker, Della Prince, died in 1962, and it is classified as extinct.