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 first language speakers, both elderly, were alive. Today, all ethnic Shasta people speak English as their first language. According to Golla, there were four distinct dialects of Shasta:[1]

Shasta
Native toUnited States
Regionprimarily northern California
EthnicityShasta people
Extinct1980s
Hokan ?
Language codes
ISO 639-3sht
Glottologshas1239
  Shasta
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Phonology

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Consonants

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Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
plain affricated
Stop ejective    pʼː    tʼː tsʼ    t͡sʼː t͡ʃʼ    t͡ʃʼː    kʼː
unaspirated p    t    ts    t͡sː t͡ʃ    t͡ʃː k    ʔ    ʔː
Fricative s    x    h   
Nasal m    n   
Approximant r j w

The length of a consonant distinguishes meaning in Shasta words. All stops, fricatives and nasals can occur as long or short in Shasta, but approximants /r j w/ only occur as short consonants.[2] Minimal pairs and near minimal pairs are shown below:

  • /t͡ʃákàráx/ a gnat vs. /t͡sàírʔ/ a board
  • /ʔáùʔ/ nothing vs. /ʔátʼːùʔ/ wild sunflower
  • /ʔìsíkʼːàʔ/ a person vs. /ʔìíkʼ/ cold

Vowels

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Shasta has four vowels, /i e a u/, with contrastive length, and two tones: high and low.

Front Central Back
short long short long short long
Close i u
Mid e
Open a

Orthography

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Silver (1966) devised a spelling system for distinguishing consonants and vowels in Shasta. Long phonemes are represented with the symbol ⟨ˑ⟩ following the character (e.g. ⟨cˑ⟩ and ⟨eˑ⟩ for/ t͡sː/ and /eː/, respectively); ejectives are indicated by an apostrophe written over the character (e.g. ⟨p̓⟩ for /pʼ/). The phoneme /j/ is represented by ⟨y⟩, and the glottal stop /ʔ/ is represented by the superscript IPA symbol ⟨ˀ⟩. The letters ⟨b d f g j l q v z⟩ are not used to represent Shasta sounds.

Shasta alphabet
A a Aˑ aˑ C c Cˑ cˑ C̓ c̓ C̓ˑ c̓ˑ Č č Čˑ čˑ Č̓ č̓ Č̓ˑ č̓ˑ
E e Eˑ eˑ H h Hˑ hˑ I i Iˑ iˑ K k Kˑ kˑ K̓ k̓ K̓ˑ k̓ˑ
M m Mˑ mˑ N n Nˑ nˑ P p Pˑ pˑ P̓ p̓ P̓ˑ p̓ˑ R r S s
Sˑ sˑ T t Tˑ tˑ T̓ t̓ T̓ˑ t̓ˑ U u Uˑ uˑ W w X x Xˑ xˑ
Y y ˀ ˀˑ

Tones

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Shasta vowels can have low or high tones. High tones are marked by an acute accent ⟨′⟩ in the orthography devised by Silver (1966), whereas low tones are left unmarked. Examples for the vowel /u/ are given below:

IPA Orthography
/ú/ ú
/úː/ úˑ
/ù/ u
/ùː/

References

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  1. ^ Golla, Victor (2011). California Indian languages. University of California Press. pp. 90–91. ISBN 9780520266674. OCLC 767533019.
  2. ^ Silver, Shirley (1966). The Shasta Language (Ph.D. thesis). University of California. pp. 37–38.

Bibliography

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  • Golla, Victor (2011), California Indian languages, Berkeley: University of California Press
  • Mithun, Marianne (1999), The Languages of Native North America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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