| Kutenai | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Canada |
| Region | British Columbia |
| Ethnicity | Kutenai people |
| Native speakers | 12 (date missing) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kut |
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Kutenai language
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The Kutenai language (also Kootenai or Ktunaxa language) is named after and is spoken by some of the Kootenai Native American/First Nations people who are indigenous to the area of North America that is now Montana, Idaho, and British Columbia.
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Kutenai is a language isolate having no demonstrable relation to any other language. The most plausible hypothesis for a connection to other languages is the proposal that it is distantly related to the Salishan languages. This hypothesis is generally considered plausible but has not been established.
The 1990 US Census counted 102 Kutenai speakers in the United States and the Canadian Census counted 220 speakers. However, as of 1999, only about a dozen elders spoke the language fluently.[1]
The first grammar of Kutenai, by Roman Catholic missionary Philippo Canestrelli, was published in 1894 in Latin.[2]