Penutian is a proposed grouping of
language families that includes many
Native American languages of western
North America, predominantly spoken at one time in
Washington,
Oregon, and
California. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the unity of some of its component families has been disputed. Some of the problems in the comparative study of languages within the phylum are the result of their early extinction and minimal documentation.