Comanche language

Comanche
Nʉmʉ Tekwapʉ̲
Pronunciation[ˈnɨmɨ ˈtekʷapɨ̥]
Native toUnited States
RegionOklahoma (formerly, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma)
EthnicityComanche
Native speakers
<9 (2022)[1]
Uto-Aztecan
  • Numic
    • Central Numic
      • Comanche
Language codes
ISO 639-3com
Glottologcoma1245
ELPComanche
Linguasphere65-AAB-bh
Former distribution of the Comanche language.
Comanche is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Comanche (English: /kəˈmæntʃi/, endonym Nʉmʉ Tekwapʉ̲) is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche, who split from the Shoshone soon after the Comanche had acquired horses around 1705. The Comanche language and the Shoshoni language are quite similar, but certain consonant changes in Comanche have inhibited mutual intelligibility.[2][3]

The name Comanche comes from the Ute word kɨmantsi "enemy, stranger".[4] Their own name for the language is nʉmʉ tekwapʉ, which means "language of the people".[5]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Duncan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ McLaughlin, John (1992). "A Counter-Intuitive Solution in Central Numic Phonology". International Journal of American Linguistics. 58 (2): 158–181. doi:10.1086/ijal.58.2.3519754. JSTOR 3519754. S2CID 148250257.
  3. ^ McLaughlin, John E. (2000). "Language Boundaries and Phonological Borrowing in the Central Numic Languages". In Casad, Gene; Willett, Thomas (eds.). Uto-Aztecan: Structural, Temporal, and Geographical Perspectives. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. pp. 293–304. ISBN 970-689-030-0.
  4. ^ Edward Sapir. 1931. Southern Paiute Dictionary. Reprinted in 1992 in: The Collected Works of Edward Sapir, X, Southern Paiute and Ute Linguistics and Ethnography. Ed. William Bright. Berlin: Mouton deGruyter.
  5. ^ Lila Wistrand Robinson & James Armagost. 1990. Comanche Dictionary and Grammar. Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics Publication 92. Dallas, Texas: The Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington.