Shoshone language

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Shoshone
Spoken in:	United States
Region:	Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Idaho
Total speakers:	~2000
Language family:	Uto-Aztecan Northern Numic Central Shoshone
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`nai`
ISO 639-3:	`shh`

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Shoshone is a Native American language spoken by the Shoshone people.

Shoshone speaking Native Americans occupy areas of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Montana. The number of people who speak Shoshone has been steadily dwindling over the last few decades, so there are only a few hundred people who speak the language fluently today, although a few thousand know it to one degree or another.

Shoshone is northernmost member of the large Uto-Aztecan language family, which includes over thirty languages whose speakers originally inhabited a vast territory stretching from the Salmon River in central Idaho down into northern and central Mexico. Shoshone belongs to the Numic subbranch of Uto-Aztecan. The word Numic comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for "Person". For example, in Shoshone the word is "neme", in Panamint it is "nümü", and in Southern Paiute the word is "nuwuvi".

The grammar of Shoshone is very different from English. It is an agglutinating language, in which words, especially verbs, tend to be quite complex with several morphemes (meaningful elements of sound) strung together.

Shoshone speaking tribes consist of a loose affiliation of clans and groups. Each tribe occupies a specific area of land.