Shasta language

Shasta
Native to United States
Region primarily northern California
Ethnicity Shasta people
Extinct by end of 20th century
Hokan ?
Language codes
ISO 639-3 sht
Glottolog shas1239[1]

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
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.

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

  1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Shasta". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Bibliography

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, October 12, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.