Shasta language
| Shasta | |
|---|---|
| Native to | United States |
| Region | primarily northern California |
| Ethnicity | Shasta people |
| Extinct | by end of 20th century |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | shas1239 |
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.
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⟩.
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.
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