Extinct by end of 20th century | Ethnicity Shasta people ISO 639-3 sht | |
Language family Hokan ?Shasta–PalaihnihanShastanShasta | ||
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
Consonants
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
Shasta language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA