Uto-Aztecan languages
| Uto-Aztecan | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Western United States, Mexico |
| Linguistic classification: | One of the world's primary language families |
| Proto-language: | Proto-Uto-Aztecan |
| Subdivisions: | |
| ISO 639-5: | |
| Glottolog: | utoa1244 |
Pre-contact distribution of Northern Uto-Aztecan languages (note: this map does not show the total distribution in Mexico).
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Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan /ˈjuːtoʊ.æzˈtɛkən/ is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family was created to show that it includes both the Ute language of Utah and the Aztecan languages of Mexico.
The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest linguistic families in the Americas in terms of number of speakers, number of languages, and geographic extension. The northernmost Uto-Aztecan language is Shoshoni, which is spoken as far north as Salmon, Idaho, while the southernmost is the Pipil language of El Salvador. Ethnologue gives the total number of languages in the family as 61, and the total number of speakers as 1,900,412. The roughly 1.5 million speakers of Nahuatl languages account for almost four-fifths (78.9%) of these.
The internal classification of the family often divides the family into two branches: a northern branch including all the languages of the US and a Southern branch including all the languages of Mexico, although it is still being discussed whether this is best understood as a genetic classification or as a geographical one.
Below this level of classification the main branches are well accepted: Numic (including languages such as Comanche and Shoshoni); and the Californian languages (formerly known as the Takic group), including Cahuilla and Luiseño, account for most of the Northern languages. Hopi and Tübatulabal are languages outside those groups.
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