The Umatilla and Walla Walla dialects of the Sahaptin language were very different from the Cayuse language isolate. Now that the Cayuse language is extinct, save about 350 documented words, most Cayuse descendants who speak a native language speak lower or upper Nez Perce. The few persons who speak Walla Walla as a first language are all elders. Those who speak Umatilla as a first language are a handful of adults, and the rest elders.

Like the landscape and all the species that inhabit the Blue Mountains and the Columbia River Plateau, the languages have undergone many dramatic changes in the past 200 years.

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