Ipai, also known as 'Iipay or Northern Diegueño, is the Native American language spoken by the Kumeyaay

Kumeyaay

The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai, Kamia, or formerly Diegueño, are Native American people of the extreme southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. They live in the states of California in the US and Baja California in Mexico. In Spanish, the name is commonly spelled...

 people of central San Diego County, 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...

. Hinton

Leanne Hinton

Leanne Hinton is an emerita professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. She specializes in American Indian languages, sociolinguistics, and language revitalization...

 (1994:28) suggested a conservative estimate of 25 surviving Ipai speakers.

Ipai belongs to the Yuman language family and to the Delta–California branch of that family. Ipai and its neighbors to the south, Kumeyaay

Kumeyaay language

Kumeyaay , also known as Central Diegueño, Kamia, and Campo, is the Native American language spoken by the Kumeyaay people of southern San Diego and Imperial counties in California. Hinton suggested a conservative estimate of 50 surviving Kumeyaay speakers...

 and Tipai

Tipai language

Tipai is the spelling used by anthropologists and people in Spanish-speaking countries to refer to Tiipay, a Native American language spoken by a number of Kumeyaay or Kumiai groups in northern Baja California and southern San Diego County, California. Tipai is also known as Southern Diegueño...

, were often considered to be dialects of a single Diegueño language, but the current consensus among linguists seem to be that at least three distinct languages are present within the dialect chain (e.g., Langdon 1990). Confusingly, Kumeyaay is commonly used as a designation both for the central language in this family and for the Ipai-Kumeyaay-Tipai people as a whole.

Published documentation for the Ipai language includes reference and teaching grammars, a dictionary, and several texts (cf. Mithun

Marianne Mithun

Marianne Mithun is a leading scholar of American Indian languages and language typology. She is currently Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara....

1999:578).