Maiduan is a small endangered

Endangered language

An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....

 language family of northeastern California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Family division

The Maiduan consists of 4 languages:

1. Maidu
   Maidu language
   Maidu is a severely endangered Maiduan language spoken by Maidu peoples traditionally in the mountains east and south of Lassen Peak in the American River and Feather River river drainages...
   
   ( Maidu proper, Northeastern Maidu, Mountain Maidu)
2. Chico
   Chico language
   Chico is an extinct Maiduan language formerly spoken by Maidu peoples who lived in Northern California, between Sacramento and the Sierra foothills.-Bibliography:...
   
   † ( Valley Maidu)
3. Konkow
   Konkow language
   The Konkow language is a part of the Maiduan language group. The word koyoo means, "meadow", with the additional 'm' being the adjective form of the word...
   
   ( Northwestern Maidu)
4. Nisenan
   Nisenan language
   Nisenan is a nearly extinct Maiduan language spoken by the Nisenan people of central California in the foothills of the Sierras, in the whole of the American, Bear and Yuba river drainages.Ethnologue states that there is only one speaker left...
   
   ( Southern Maidu)

The languages have similar phonologies

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 (i.e. sound systems) but differ significantly in terms of grammar. They are not mutually intelligible, even though many works often refer to all of the speakers of these languages as Maidu. The Chico dialects are little known due to scanty documentation, so their precise genetic relationship to the other languages probably cannot be determined (Mithun 1999).

Chico is now extinct

Extinct language

An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...

. The other languages are extremely endangered and nearing extinction: Northeastern Maidu has 1 or 2 speakers, Konkow has 1-2 speakers, Nisenan has only 1 speaker (Hinton 1994, reported in Gordon 2005).

Genetic relations

Maiduan is often considered in various Penutian phylum proposals. It was one of the original members of California Penutian (the Penutian "core").