Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...
, the ancestral language of the Mono people. Mono consists of two dialects, ''Eastern'' and ''Western''. The name "Monachi" is commonly used in reference to Western Mono and "Owens Valley Paiute" in reference to Eastern Mono. In 1925, Alfred Kroeber estimated that Mono had 3,000 to 4,000 speakers. only about 40 elderly people spoke Mono as their first language. It is classified as critically endangered by UNESCO. It is spoken in the southern
Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...
Northern Paiute
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a r ...
; these two are classified as the Western group of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family."Mono." ''Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley.'' 2009-2010 (retrieved 6 May 2010)
Western Mono
The number of Native speakers in 1994 ranged from 37 to 41. The majority of speakers are from the
Northfork Rancheria The North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians of California is a federally recognized tribe of Mono Native Americans. North Fork Rancheria is the name of the tribe's reservation, which is located in Madera County, California.Pritzker, 137 Nim is their ...
Big Sandy Rancheria
The Big Sandy Rancheria of Mono Indians of California is a ranchería and federally recognized tribe of Western Mono Indians (Monache) located in Fresno County, California, United States.Dunlap have from 12 to 14 speakers. The Northfork Mono are developing a dictionary, and both they and the Big Sandy Rancheria provide language classes. While not all are completely fluent, about 100 members of Northfork have "some command of the language."Hinton, 31 In the late 1950s, Lamb compiled a dictionary and grammar of Northfork Mono. The Western Mono language has a number of Spanish loanwords dating to the period of Spanish colonization of the Californias, as well as loanwords from Yokuts and Miwok
Owens Valley Paiute
In the mid-1990s, an estimated 50 people spoke the Owens Valley Paiute language, also known as Eastern Mono. Informal language classes exist and singers keep native language songs alive. Linguist Sydney Lamb studied this language in the 1950s and proposed the name Paviotso, but that was not widely adopted.
The Handbook of Indians of California, by A. L. Kroeber (1919) says that the Owens Valley Paiutes Are Northern Paiute or Mono/Bannock.
Phonemes
Below is given the phoneme inventory of Northfork Western Mono as presented by Lamb (1958).
Vowels
Consonants
Suprasegmental
Lamb (1958) also described four suprasegmental features that he ascribed phonemic status.
Morphology
Mono is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
*Hinton, Leanne. ''Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages.'' Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1994. .
*Miller, Wick R. "Numic Languages." ''Handbook of North American Indians: Great Basin, Volume 11.'' Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986. .
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Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...