Shasta is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken from northern California into southwestern Oregon. It was spoken in a number of dialects, possibly including Okwanuchu. The last fluent speaker, Clara Wicks, died in 1978, and by 1980, only two first language speakers, both elderly, were alive. Today, all ethnic Shasta people speak English as their first language.
Name
The origins of the term "Shasta" are vague; the Shasta called themselves "" (plain speakers). Peter Skene Ogden is the first recorded Euro-American to have used a variation of the term "Shasta", which he spelled "Sastise," "Castice," "Sistise," "Sarti," and "Sasty".
Dialects According to Golla, there were four distinct dialects of Shasta:
(Oregon Shasta) (Klamath River Shasta) (Scott Valley Shasta) (Shasta Valley Shasta)
Phonology Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal plain affricatedStopejective unaspirated Fricative Nasal Approximant
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 only occur as short consonants. Minimal pairs and near minimal pairs are shown below:
a gnat vs. a board nothing vs. wild sunflower a person vs. cold
Vowels Shasta has four vowels, , with contrastive length, and two tones: high and low.
FrontCentralBack short long short long short longCloseMidOpen
Tones 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 are given below: IPAOrthography/ú/ú/úː/úˑ/ù/u/ùː/uˑ
Orthography Silver (1966) devised a spelling system for distinguishing consonants and vowels in Shasta. Long phonemes are represented with the symbol following the character (e.g. and for and , respectively); ejectives are indicated by an apostrophe written over the character (e.g. for ). The phoneme is represented by , and the glottal stop is represented by the superscript IPA symbol . The letters are not used to represent Shasta sounds. +Shasta alphabetA aAˑ aˑC cCˑ cˑC̓ c̓C̓ˑ c̓ˑČ čČˑ čˑČ̓ č̓Č̓ˑ č̓ˑE eEˑ eˑH hHˑ hˑI iIˑ iˑK kKˑ kˑK̓ k̓K̓ˑ k̓ˑM mMˑ mˑN nNˑ nˑP pPˑ pˑP̓ p̓P̓ˑ p̓ˑR rS sSˑ sˑT tTˑ tˑT̓ t̓T̓ˑ t̓ˑU uUˑ uˑW wX xXˑ xˑY yˀˀˑ
References
Bibliography Golla, Victor (2011), California Indian languages, Berkeley: University of California Press
External links Shasta language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages Shasta basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database OLAC resources in and about the Shasta language