Language Family

Uto-Aztecan

YOO-toh-az-TEK-en (/ˌjuːtoʊæzˈtɛkən/)

North American Language Families

Uto-Aztecan is a language family of some sixty languages spoken across the western United States and Mexico, uniting the Numic languages of the Great Basin, Hopi, the Tepiman and Taracahitic languages of northwestern Mexico, and the Aztecan (Nahuan) languages of central Mexico, whose best known member is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire.

Facts

Region

The western United States (Great Basin, Southwest) and Mexico, from Sonora and Chihuahua south through central Mexico 3

Speaker Count

1,910,000 3

Aggregate total across all living Uto-Aztecan languages, dominated by the Nahuan branch; figure as of the mid-2010s, drawn from national census and survey data as compiled by Ethnologue.

Proto-Language Status

Proto-Uto-Aztecan is reconstructed via the comparative method, with a proposed homeland in the upland border region of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora and Chihuahua roughly five thousand years before present. The split between a Northern branch (including Hopi) and a Southern branch (including the Aztecan languages) is well established, though finer subgrouping remains debated among specialists. 4

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Classification Confidence

Established 1

Reconstructed Ancestor

Reconstructed 2

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Number of Languages

69 1

Connections

Includes

Hopi

Source Ethnologue: Languages of the World

Nahuatl

Source Ethnologue: Languages of the World

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