Shasta language


The Shasta language is a nearly 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:

Consonants

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. Minimal pairs and near minimal pairs are shown below:
Shasta has four vowels,, with contrastive length, and two tones: high and low.

Orthography

Silver devised a system to write words in Shasta. Long phonemes are represented with the symbol ⟨ˑ⟩ following the character ; ejectives are indicated by an apostrophe written over the character. The phoneme is represented by, 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.
A aAˑ aˑC cCˑ cˑC̓ c̓C̓ˑ c̓ˑČ čČˑ čˑČ̓ č̓Č̓ˑ č̓ˑE eEˑ eˑH hHˑ hˑI iIˑ iˑK kKˑ kˑK̓ k̓K̓ˑ k̓ˑM mMˑ mˑ
N nNˑ nˑP pPˑ pˑP̓ p̓P̓ˑ p̓ˑR rS sSˑ sˑT tTˑ tˑT̓ t̓T̓ˑ t̓ˑU uUˑ uˑW wX xXˑ xˑY yˀˀˑ

Tones

Shasta vowels can have low or high tones. High tones are marked by an acute accent ⟨′⟩ in the orthography devised by Silver, whereas low tones are left unmarked. Examples for the vowel /u/ are given below:
IPAOrtography
/ú/ú
/úː/úˑ
/ù/u
/ùː/uˑ