Shasta language

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.

Sounds

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Stop	plain	p	t		k	ʔ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ		kʼ
Affricate	plain		ts	tʃ
	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>.

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.

References

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

External links

• Shasta language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• Ethnologue report for Shasta