Shasta language

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Shasta
Spoken in United States
Region primarily northern California
Ethnicity Shasta people
Extinct by end of 20th century
Language family
Shastan
  • Shasta
Language codes
ISO 639-3 sht

The Shasta language is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken from northern California into southwestern Oregon. It was spoken in a number of dialects, possibly including Okwanuchu. By 1980, only two fluent speakers, both elderly, were alive. Today, all surviving Shasta people speak English.

Contents

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Consonants

Bilabial Dental Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n
Stop plain p t k ʔ
ejective
Affricate plain ts
ejective tsʼ tʃʼ
Fricative s x h
Rhotic r
Approximant j w

Length is distinctive for consonants in Shasta. The affricates are generally written <c> and <č>, and the ejectives indicated by an apostrophe written over the character. The phoneme /j/ is represented by <y>.

[edit] Vowels

Shasta has four vowels, /i e a u/, with contrastive length, and two tones: high tone, marked with an acute accent, and low tone, which is unmarked.

[edit] References

  • Mithun, Marianne (1999), The Languages of Native North America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 

[edit] External links

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