Uto-Aztecan (also
Uto-Aztekan; ) is a
Native AmericanIndigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
language familyA language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
. It is one of the largest (both in geographical extension and number of languages) and most well-established linguistic families of the Americas. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the
Great BasinThe Great Basin is a large, arid region of the western United States. Its boundaries vary depending on how it is defined, but it is most commonly defined as the contiguous endorheic basin roughly between the Wasatch Mountains and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Culturally, the Great Basin is home to...
of the
Western United StatesThe Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
(
OregonOregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
,
IdahoIdaho is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans." Idaho was admitted to the Union on 3 July 1890 as the 43rd state....
,
MontanaMontana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of the state contains numerous mountain ranges; other 'island' ranges are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
,
UtahUtah is a western state of the United States. It was the 45th state admitted to the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80 percent of Utah's 2,736,424 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering around Salt Lake City. In contrast, vast expanses of the state are nearly uninhabited, making...
,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
,
NevadaNevada is a state located in the western region of the United States. The capital is Carson City and the largest city is Las Vegas. The state's nickname is Silver State, due to the large number of silver deposits that were discovered and mined there...
,
ArizonaThe State of Arizona is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. The capital and largest city is Phoenix. The second largest city is Tucson, followed in size by the four Phoenix metropolitan area cities of Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, and Scottsdale.Arizona was the 48th and...
), through western, central and southern
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
(incl.
SonoraSonora is a state in northwestern Mexico with an area of 182,052 square kilometers, making it around the size of Syria. It is surrounded by the states of Baja California and the Sea of Cortez to the west, Chihuahua to the east, Sinaloa to the south, and Arizona to the north.The capital is...
, Chihuahua,
NayaritNayarit is one of Mexico’s 31 states and is located on the central west coast, bordering the Pacific Ocean. Nayarit is surrounded by the states of Sinaloa to the northwest, Durango to the north, Zacatecas to the northeast and Jalisco to the south with the Pacific Ocean bordering it to the west...
,
DurangoDurango is one of the constituent states of Mexico, with a population of 1,509,118. It has Mexico's second-lowest population density, after Baja California Sur...
,
ZacatecasZacatecas state of Mexico is located in the north-central region and it is bounded to the northwest by Durango, to the north by Coahuila, to the east by San Luis Potosí, to the south by Aguascalientes and Guanajuato and to the southwest by Jalisco and Nayarit...
,
JaliscoJalisco is one of the 31 Mexican states that, together with the Mexican Federal District, conform the 32 federal entities of Mexico.Jalisco is located in central-western Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Nayarit to the northwest, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosí to the north,...
,
MichoacánMichoacán formally Michoacán de Ocampo , is one of the 31 constituent states of Mexico. It borders the states of Colima and Jalisco to the west, Guanajuato and Querétaro to the north, México to the east, Guerrero to the south-east, and the Pacific Ocean to the south.Michoacán has an area of...
,
GuerreroThe State of Guerrero is a state in the southern meridional region of Mexico. With an area of , it occupies about 3.3% of Mexican territory. It borders the Pacific Ocean to the south , Michoacán to the west , Oaxaca to the east , and Mexico State , Morelos , and Puebla to the north...
,
San Luis PotosíThe Mexican state of San Luis Potosí has an area of .It is in the central part of the Mexican republic, It borders Coahuila to the north, Nuevo Leon to the north-east, Tamaulipas to the east, Veracruz to the east, Hidalgo, Queretaro, and Guanajuato to the south, and Zacatecas to the north-west...
, Hidalgo,
PueblaPuebla is a Mexican state located in the south-central part of the country, to the east of Mexico City. The state borders Veracruz to the east, Hidalgo, Mexico State, Tlaxcala, and Morelos to the west, and Guerrero and Oaxaca to the south. The state's largest cities are Puebla and Tehuacan, it has...
,
VeracruzVeracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave is one of the 31 states that constitute the United Mexican States. Veracruz is borderd by Tamaulipas to the north, the Gulf to the east, Tabasco to the southeast, Oaxaca and Chiapas to the south and Puebla, Hidalgo, and San Luis Potosi to the west...
,
MorelosMorelos is one of the 31 constituent states of Mexico. Morelos has an area of about , making it the second-smallest of the country's states. Morelos is bordered by Mexico State to the north-east and north-west, the Federal District to the north, Puebla to the east, and Guerrero to the south-west...
, Estado de México, and the Federal District), and into parts of Central America (
PipilPipil is a Uto-Aztecan language descended from Nahuatl which was spoken in several parts of present day Central America before the Spanish conquest. It is on the verge of extinction in western El Salvador and has already gone extinct elsewhere in Central America...
in
El SalvadorEl Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America. It borders the Pacific Ocean between Guatemala and Honduras. It lies on the Gulf of Fonseca, as does Nicaragua further south. It has a population of approximately 5.7 million people as of 2009 on...
; extinct varieties in
GuatemalaGuatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast. Its size is just under 110,000 km² with an estimated population...
and
HondurasHonduras is a republic in Central America. It was formerly known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras...
).
UtahUtah is a western state of the United States. It was the 45th state admitted to the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80 percent of Utah's 2,736,424 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering around Salt Lake City. In contrast, vast expanses of the state are nearly uninhabited, making...
is named after the indigenous Uto-Aztecan
UteThe Ute are an ethnically related group of American Indians now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah ; Southern Ute in Colorado ; and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico...
people. Classical Nahuatl, the language of the
AztecThe Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the Late post-Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Often the term...
s, and its
modern relativesNahuatl, a member of the Uto-Aztecan language family, consists of a large number of dialects, many of which belong to one or another dialect continuum. As of 2008, the Mexican government recognizes thirty that are spoken in Mexico . Some specialists exclude Pipil...
are part of the Uto-Aztecan family.
History of classification
The similarities between the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J.C.E. Buschmann. However, Buschmann failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and the Northern Uto-Aztecan languages, instead ascribing the similarities between the two groups to Aztec contact influence. Brinton included the Aztecan languages in the linguistic family 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. The idea nonetheless remained controversial, and was rejected in Powell's 1891 classification.
The Uto-Aztecan family was established through systematic work in the early 1900s by linguists such as
Alfred L. KroeberAlfred Louis Kroeber was one of the most influential figures in American anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century....
, who established the relations between the Shoshonean languages, and especially
Edward SapirEdward Sapir , was a German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics. He was one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis...
, who proved the unity between Powell's Sonoran and Shoshonean languages in a series of groundbreaking applications of the
comparative methodHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
to unwritten Native American languages.
Most issues related to Uto-Aztecan subgrouping are uncontroversial. Six groupings are universally accepted as valid--the Numic, Takic, Pimic, Taracahitic, Corachol, and Aztecan branches--along with two ungrouped languages--Tübatulabal and Hopi. Higher level relations between these groups remain controversial. The Sonoran branch (including Pimic, Taracahitic and Corachol) and Shoshonean branch (including Numic, Takic, Tübatulabal and Hopi) first postulated in the 19th century, in particular, are not accepted by a number of scholars.
Uto-Aztecan has been included in some long range proposals of linguistic super-families. A hypothesis proposed by Benjamin Lee Whorf relating Uto-Aztecan to Kiowa-Tanoan, in an Aztec-Tanoan family formerly had modest support, but Lyle Campbell (1997) and the great majority of modern specialists consider this hypothesis possible, but unproven (Mithun 1999).
Joseph GreenbergJoseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
included Uto-Aztecan in his widely criticized and highly controversial
AmerindAmerind is a higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in his 1987 book . In this book Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three families...
macro-family along with all Native American linguistic families except for Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene.
Geographical extension and Homeland
The Uto-Aztecan homeland is generally thought to have been somewhere in the
Southwestern United StatesThe Southwestern United States is defined as the states that lie west of the Mississippi River, with the qualification of a certain northern limit such as the 37, 38, 39, or 40 degree north latitude. A 97.33 longitude degree west could qualify as the separation of the American Southwest from the...
-
ArizonaThe State of Arizona is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. The capital and largest city is Phoenix. The second largest city is Tucson, followed in size by the four Phoenix metropolitan area cities of Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, and Scottsdale.Arizona was the 48th and...
,
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, it has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S...
or northern
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
where the first split between Northern and Southern branches took place. The homeland of the Numic branch has been placed near
Death ValleyDeath Valley is a desert located in the southwestern United States. It is the lowest, driest, and hottest location in North America. Badwater, a basin located within Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 ft below sea level...
,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
and the Southern Uto-Aztecan languages are thought to have spread out from a place in north-western Mexico in southern
SonoraSonora is a state in northwestern Mexico with an area of 182,052 square kilometers, making it around the size of Syria. It is surrounded by the states of Baja California and the Sea of Cortez to the west, Chihuahua to the east, Sinaloa to the south, and Arizona to the north.The capital is...
or northern
SinaloaSinaloa is one of the 31 states of Mexico, located in the northwestern part of the country. The state is bordered to the north by Sonora and Chihuahua; to the south, by Nayarit; to the east by Durango, and to the west, across the Gulf of California, Baja California Sur. The state extends...
.
Original locations of living and extinct Uto-Aztecan languages in the USA and Mexico
Locations of living Uto-Aztecan languages in Mexico and Mesoamerica
Vowels
Proto-Uto-Aztecan is reconstructed as having an unusual five-vowel system: . Langacker (1970) demonstrated that the fifth vowel should be reconstructed as as opposed to —there had been a long-running dispute over the proper reconstruction (Campbell 1997:136).
Consonants
| | BilabialIn phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
| Coronal Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or sub-apical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such dexterity...
| PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
| VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
| Labialized
velar | GlottalGlottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
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| Stop A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are oral stops with a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The term is also used to...
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| Affricate Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
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| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
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| Nasal A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue...
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| Rhotic In linguistics, rhotic can refer to:* Rhotic consonant, such as the sound in red* R-colored vowel, such as the sound in Midwestern American English pronunciation of fur and before a consonant as in hard....
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| Semivowel Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllabic vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the nucleus of a syllable or mora; they are not the most prominent part of the syllable...
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and may have actually been and , respectively.
Genealogy of Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan has long been accepted as a genuine linguistic family, and there is general agreement on the eight primary groups into which it is divided. Disagreement arises as to the question of which varieties are separate languages and which are dialects of a single language; and higher-level groupings. Below is a consensus classification based on Campbell (1997), Mithun (1999), and Goddard (1999). The notes discuss divergent interpretations proposed by other recent authorities, such as Goddard (1996), Miller (1983), and Mithun (1999). Among the differences are the larger level subgroupings called Northern and Southern Uto-Aztecan. Some linguists have argued for a grouping including Takic, Numic, Hopi, and Tübatulabal and have grouped them together as "Northern Uto-Aztecan." In the southern branch, some linguists formerly grouped the Pimic, Taracahitan, and Corachol languages into a larger level group called "Sonoran", but this grouping has also not gained wide acceptance. Many scholars instead see a closer connection between Pimic, Taracahitan, Corachol, and Aztecan and group the four into a common group called "Southern Uto-Aztecan", but this also has its critics. Ties between Corachol and Aztecan have been recognized by
KaufmanTerrence Kaufman is an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He is currently a professor at the department of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh....
(2001 ), who argues that they are best understood as the result of a period of close contact and linguistic diffusion between the Nahuan and Coracholan groups. Most scholars recognize an increasing need to look at the breakup of Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a case of the gradual disintegration of a dialect continuum (Mithun 1999).
Northern Uto-Aztecan
Many recent linguists have not accepted the validity of the division between Northern and Southern Uto-Aztecan as a genuine genetic branching. They have either recognized seven to nine independent branches of Uto-Aztecan or accepted Southern Uto-Aztecan but recognized four independent branches in the place of Northern Uto-Aztecan.
HopiHopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people of northeastern Arizona, USA, although today some Hopi are monolingual English speakers.The use of the language gradually declined over the course of the 20th century...
TübatulabalTübatulabal is a Uto-Aztecan language, traditionally spoken in Kern County, California. It is the traditional language of the Tübatulabal people, who have now largely shifted to English. The language is currently considered moribund....
NumicNumic is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, and southern Great Plains...
- Central Numic languages
- Comanche
Comanche is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche people. The Comanche split off from the Shoshone soon after they acquired horses around 1705...
- Timbisha
The Timbisha language is the language of the Native American people who have inhabited the region in and around Death Valley, California since late prehistoric times. There are a few elderly individuals who can speak the language in California and Nevada, but none are monolingual and all use...
(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western, Central , and Eastern )
- Shoshone
Shoshone or Shoshoni is a Native American language spoken by the Shoshone people.Shoshone-speaking Native Americans occupy areas of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Montana...
(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western , Gosiute , Northern , and Eastern )
- Southern Numic languages
- Kawaiisu
The Kawaiisu language is an Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Kawaiisu people of California.-Classification:Kawaiisu is a member of the Southern Numic division of the Uto-Aztecan language family.-Linguistic Environment:...
- Colorado River
The Ute language , of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, is actually a dialect chain which stretches from southeastern California to Colorado. Individual dialects are Chemehuevi, which is in danger of extinction, Southern Paiute , and Ute proper...
(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Chemehuevi , Southern Paiute , and Ute )
- Western Numic languages
- Mono
Mono is a Native American language of the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages. It is spoken in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and the Owens Valley of east-central California. It is nearly extinct....
(two main dialects: Eastern and Western )
- Northern Paiute
Northern Paiute is a Western Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, which according to Marianne Mithun had around 500 fluent speakers in 1994, although Ethnologue puts the number of speakers in 1999 as 1,631. It is closely related to Mono.-Bibliography:*Mithun, Marianne . Languages of Native...
(a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Southern Nevada , Northern Nevada , Oregon , and Bannock )
Takic
- Serrano-Gabrielino
- Serran
- Serrano
The Serrano language is a language in the Takic branch of the Uto-Aztecan family spoken by the Serrano people of Southern California. The language is closely related to Tongva and Kitanemuk....
- Kitanemuk
Kitanemuk was a Northern Uto-Aztecan language of the Takic branch. It was very closely related to Serrano, and may have been a dialect of Serrano. The last speakers lived some time in the 1940s, though the last fieldwork was carried out in 1937. J. P...
†
- Gabrielino-Fernandeño
The Tongva language is an Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Tongva, a Native American people who live in and around Los Angeles, California...
†
- Cupan
- Cahuilla-Cupeño
- Cahuilla
The Cahuilla are a tribe of Native Americans that have inhabited the U.S. state of California for more than 2,000 years, originally covering an area of about 2,400 square miles . The traditional Cahuilla territory was near the geographic center of Southern California...
- Cupeño
Cupeño is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, formerly spoken by the Cupeño people of Southern California, USA, who now speak English.-Consonants: is realized as before unstressed or . and appear to be in free variation....
- Luiseño-Juaneño
The Luiseño language is an Uto-Aztecan language of California spoken by the Luiseño, a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County,...
Southern Uto-Aztecan
PimicPiman refers a group of languages within the Uto-Aztecan family that are spoken by ethnic groups spanning from Arizona in the north to Durango, Mexico in the south.The Piman languages are as follows :...
(Tepiman)
- Pima-Papago
O'odham is an Uto-Aztecan language of southern Arizona and northern Sonora where the Tohono O'odham and Pima reside. As of the year 2000, there were estimated to be approximately 9750 speakers in the United States and Mexico combined, although there may be more due to underreporting...
(Upper Piman)
- Pima Bajo
Pima Bajo is a Mexican indigenous language of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family, spoken by around 1000 speakers in northern Mexico. The language is called O'ob No'ok by its speakers. The closest related languages are the O'odham and the Tepehuán languages.Speakers of Oob No'ok...
(Lower Piman)
- Tepehuán language
Tepehuán is the name of two closely related languages of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family, both spoken in northern Mexico...
s (Northern and Southern )
- Tepecano
The Tepecano language is an extinct indigenous language of Mexico belonging the Uto-Aztecan language-family. It was formerly spoken by a small group of people in Atzqueltlán , Jalisco, a small village on the Río Bolaños in the far northern part of the state, just east of the territory of the...
†
Taracahitic
- Tarahumaran
- Tarahumara
The Tarahumara language is a Mexican indigenous language of the Uto-Aztecan language family spoken by around 70,000 Tarahumara people in the state of Chihuahua.-Varieties:The ethnologue counts 5 varieties of Tarahumara:-Tarahumara Language Ecology:...
- Guarijío
Guarijio is an Uto-Aztecan language of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in northwestern Mexico...
(Varihio)
- Tubar †
- Cahita
Cáhita is a group of North American Indians, belonging to the Piman family, and numbering some 40,000....
(YaquiYaqui , or Yoeme, is a Native American language of the Uto-Aztecan family. It is spoken by about 15,000 people, mostly of the border Yaqui tribe, in the region around the Mexican state of Sonora, and Arizona in the United States....
-MayoMayo is an Uto-Aztecan language. It is spoken by about 40,000 people, the Mexican Mayo or Yoreme Indians, who live in the South of the Mexican state of Sonora and in the North of the neighboring state of Sinaloa...
-Cahita)
- Opatan
- Ópata
Òpata is the name of the Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Opata people of northern central Sonora in Mexico...
†
- Eudeve †? (Heve, Dohema)
Corachol-Aztecan
- Cora-Huichol
- Cora
The Cora language is an indigenous language of Mexico of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family. It is spoken by the ethnic group that is widely known as the Cora but who refer to themselves as Naáyarite. The Cora inhabit the northern sierra of the Mexican state Nayarit which is named after its...
- Huichol
The Huichol language is an indigenous language of Mexico which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken by the ethnic group widely known as the Huichol , whose mountainous territory extends over portions of the Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Durango, mostly in Jalisco...
- Nahuan
Proto-Nahuan is the hypothetical daughter language of the Proto-Uto-Aztecan language which is the common ancestor from which the modern Nahuan languages have developed. Some phonological changes shared by all Nahuan languages are:...
(Aztecan, Nahua, Nahuatlan)
- Pochutec
Pochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct...
†
- Core Nahua
Nahuatl, a member of the Uto-Aztecan language family, consists of a large number of dialects, many of which belong to one or another dialect continuum. As of 2008, the Mexican government recognizes thirty that are spoken in Mexico . Some specialists exclude Pipil...
- Pipil
Pipil is a Uto-Aztecan language descended from Nahuatl which was spoken in several parts of present day Central America before the Spanish conquest. It is on the verge of extinction in western El Salvador and has already gone extinct elsewhere in Central America...
(Nahuate, Nawat) )
- Nahuatl
Nahuatl is a group of related languages and dialects of the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Collectively they are spoken by an estimated Nahua people, most of whom live in Central Mexico...
(Mexicano, Aztec )
In addition to the above languages for which linguistic evidence exists, there were several dozen extinct languages with little or no documentation in Northern Mexico, many of which were probably Uto-Aztecan (Campbell 1997).
† =
extinctAn extinct language is a language which no longer has any speakers. Extinct languages may be contrasted with dead languages: no longer spoken as a main language.-Language loss:...
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