KERN RIVER VALLEY, Calif. -- The last known speaker of a North American tribal language is now helping others learn the language.

Hundreds of years ago in Kern County, before one word of English or Spanish was ever uttered, people communicated in Native American dialects.

Though most Native American languages have disappeared, there is still hope for one local language with a man who is its last speaker.

Pakaanil, the native language of the Tubatulabal tribes of the Kern River Valley, is a language that has been spoken for hundreds, possibly thousands of years in Kern County.

What makes this language so unique is the man who is speaking these words. Jim Andreas, 77, is the last known native speaker of Pakaanil.

Asked what happened to everyone who spoke fluent Pakaanil, Andreas said, “Dead, I guess.”

“Jim is the future of the language,” said linguist Lindsay Marean.

It's a fragile future for what was once the strongest language in the Kern County mountains. “California has several hundred languages. I think most of them are endangered,” Native American Betsy Johnson said, also agreeing that many of the languages are gone.

“The language would be forgotten if Jim wasn't here to share the language with us,” said Native American Anthony Stone.

Three days a week at the language center in the Kern River Valley, Betsy Johnson, Anthony Stone and several others meet to study Pakaanil.

Everyone at the center, direct descendants of the people who spoke Pakaanil, are learning it as a second language.

Andreas sits quietly in the back of the center during study time, seemingly not paying much attention, though he does. “I just tell them more or less the right pronunciation for words.”

He is the only one left who can, and is willing, to teach them the correct way.

And the group has come far. It was only five years ago that Johnson realized a major part of her culture was about to vanish and something needed to be done.

“I knew one word when I started. I can pick up a book. I can tell you a story,” Johnson said.

They started out simple, learning numbers, words for animals and it progressed from there. Each step of the way, Andreas is keeping them on track with the true tribal tongue.

So what caused this near-complete dialect disintegration? European settlers are typically to blame for causing hundreds of other Native American languages to become extinct.

“Because of the history of language suppression, people were really punished for speaking the native languages and really made to feel ashamed to speak the native languages,” said Marean.

Johnson added that languages were beaten out of people.

There are a few other elders who are native Pakaanil speakers, but for whatever reason, possibly that lingering shame, they won't utter a word.

Andreas is a man of few words, though each word in his native language carries generations of historical significance. "I'm not much of a talker," Andreas said. He agrees that though he’s not much of a talker, there is irony in helping continue the language.

At a recent Native American festival, Johnson taught the group a prayer in Pakaanil. Andreas was right there, even correcting Johnson. With every correction comes learning that is cherished, because Johnson and others understand they may not have much time.

When Andreas, 77, a man of few words, is gone, so may be much of the native Pakaanil language not already captured by the language center.

The language center is funded by a grant from the Owens Valley Career Development Center.

Johnson and the group are recording every session, so they will have a record of Andreas and the lessons.

They are also working with Marean to develop a Pakaanil dictionary.

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