Uto-Aztecan languages

The Uto-Aztecan language family, sometimes called Uto-Aztekan or Uto-Nahuatl, includes more than thirty Native American languages spoken almost entirely in the western United States and Mexico. Its name comes from the shared origins of the Ute language of Utah and the Nahuan (Aztecan) languages of Mexico. This family is one of the largest in the Americas by number of speakers, number of languages, and geographic spread. According to Ethnologue, there are 61 languages in the family with a total of about 1.9 million speakers, over 85 percent of whom speak Nahuan languages. The northernmost language is Shoshoni, spoken as far north as Salmon, Idaho, while the southernmost is Nawat, found in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

In the United States, Uto-Aztecan languages are spoken in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, California, Nevada, Wyoming, and Arizona. In Mexico, they appear in Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Durango, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Puebla, Veracruz, Morelos, the State of Mexico, and Mexico City. Classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and its modern relatives belong to this family. The Nahuan language Nawat spread to Central America before European contact and once had many speakers there. It is now extinct in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, nearly extinct in western El Salvador, but has seen recent revitalization efforts.

The family is often split into a northern branch (all US languages) and a southern branch (all Mexican languages), though scholars debate whether this division is genetic or purely geographic. Below that level, the main branches are widely accepted. The northern languages include Numic (such as Comanche and Shoshoni) and the Californian languages, formerly called Takic (including Cahuilla and Luiseño). Hopi and Tübatulabal stand outside those groups. The southern languages are divided into Tepiman (including Oʼodham and Tepehuán), Tarahumaran (Raramuri and Guarijio), Cahitan (Yaqui and Mayo), Coracholan (Cora and Huichol), and Nahuan.

The homeland of the family is generally thought to be the southwestern United States or possibly northwestern Mexico. An alternative theory placing the origin in southern Mexico, within the Mesoamerican language area, has not been widely accepted.

The most famous pre-Columbian writing system from the family is the Aztec or Nahuatl script, which combines ideographs with phonetic logograms and syllabic signs specific to Nahuatl. Used in central Mexico during the Epiclassic and Post-classic periods, it was once thought reserved for elites, but recently deciphered topographical codices and early colonial catechisms show it was also used by scribes, peasants, and merchants.

Linguists have accepted Uto-Aztecan as a family since the early 1900s, with six generally valid subgroups: Numic, Takic, Pimic, Taracahitic, Corachol, and Aztecan. Two languages, Tübatulabal and Hopi, are sometimes called isolates within the family. Recent studies have questioned the unity of Taracahitic and Takic, and computer-assisted statistical work has challenged long-held assumptions. Disagreement over higher-level groupings has persisted since the 19th century, and scholars also disagree on where to draw language boundaries within dialect continua.

Similarities among the languages were noted as early as 1859 by J. C. E. Buschmann, but he attributed them to diffusion rather than genetic affiliation. Daniel Garrison Brinton added the Aztecan languages to the family in 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. John Wesley Powell rejected this in his own 1891 classification, recognizing two separate families: "Shoshonean" (Takic, Numic, Hopi, Tübatulabal) and "Sonoran" (Pimic, Taracahitan, Corachol). In the early 1900s, Alfred L. Kroeber expanded the Shoshonean group, and Edward Sapir demonstrated the unity of Aztecan, Sonoran, and Shoshonean, with his comparative method work on unwritten languages considered groundbreaking. Voegelin, Voegelin, and Hale (1962) argued for a three-way division following Powell. As of around 2011, debate continues over the proposed split between Northern Uto-Aztecan (Powell's Shoshonean) and Southern Uto-Aztecan (Sonoran plus Aztecan). Jeffrey Heath (1978) supported the northern grouping with morphological evidence, and Alexis Manaster Ramer (1992) added phonological evidence from a sound law. Terrence Kaufman (1981) also accepted this division.