Washo

wáꞏšiw ʔítlu

Washo is a language isolate spoken in United States, by about 20 people. Glottolog rates it moribund.

Washo · 38.8°N 119.6°W

An isolate: no relationship to any other known language has been demonstrated.

Washo or Washoe (; endonym wá·šiw ʔítlu) is an endangered Native American language isolate spoken by the Washo on the California–Nevada border in the drainages of the Truckee and Carson Rivers, especially around Lake Tahoe. While there were only 20 elderly native speakers of Washo as of 2011, since 1994 there had been a small immersion school that has produced a number of moderately fluent younger speakers. The immersion school has since closed its doors and the language program operates through the Cultural Resource Department for the Washoe Tribe. The language remains very endangered; however, there has been a renaissance in the language revitalization movement as many of the students who attended the original immersion school have become teachers.

Ethnographic Washo speakers belonged to the Great Basin culture area and they were the only non-Numic group of that area. The language has borrowed from the neighboring Uto-Aztecan, Maiduan and Miwokan languages and is connected to both the Great Basin and Northern California sprachbunds.

From Wikipedia · Washo language · CC BY-SA 4.0

Words in Washo

Meaning	Word	Romanization
person	tanu*
eye	wigi*
ear	pisew*
nose	deSuyep*
tooth	yek*
tongue	gitmadut*
hand	du*
blood	daSaN*
bone	dibi7*
knee	moko*
water	dímeʔ
fire	di7yu*
sun	dibe*
stone	de7ek*
mountain	dala7ak*
tree	dewdi7iS*
night	lelm*
dog	suku7*
louse	cibel*
one	laka7*
two	hesge7*
I	le*
you	mi*
we	lew*
drink	ime7*
see	igi*
hear	damal*
die	yuli*
come	ibi7*
path	yeweS*