| Ute | |
| Nativename: | núu-'apaghapi núuchi |
| States: | United States |
| Region: | Utah, Colorado |
| Ethnicity: | Ute |
| Speakers: | 1,640 (2010) |
| Familycolor: | Uto-Aztecan |
| Fam1: | Uto-Aztecan |
| Fam2: | Numic |
| Fam3: | Southern Numic |
| Fam4: | Colorado River |
| Iso3: | none |
| Isoexception: | dialect |
| Glotto: | utee1244 |
| Glottorefname: | Ute |
| Map: | Ute dialect map.png |
| Mapcaption: | Area where the Ute dialect is spoken.[1] |
| Notice: | IPA |
Ute [2] is a dialect of the Colorado River Numic language, spoken by the Ute people. Speakers primarily live on three reservations: Uintah-Ouray (or Northern Ute) in northeastern Utah, Southern Ute in southwestern Colorado, and Ute Mountain in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Ute is part of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Other dialects in this dialect chain are Chemehuevi and Southern Paiute. As of 2010, there were 1,640 speakers combined of all three dialects Colorado River Numic. Ute's parent language, Colorado River Numic, is classified as a threatened language, although there are tribally-sponsored language revitalization programs for the dialect.
Ute as a term was applied to the group by Spanish explorers, being derived from the term quasuatas, used by the Spanish at the time to refer to all tribes north of the Pueblo peoples and up to the Shoshone peoples.[3] The Ute people refer to their own language as núu-'apaghap
i or núuchi, meaning "the people's speech" and "of the people" respectively.[4]T.Givon (2011) gives the following orthography and phonetic information for Southern Ute. Northern Ute differs from Southern and Central in some lexical and phonological areas.
Southern Ute has five vowels, as well as several allophones, which are not shown in the orthography. Each vowel can be short or long, and vowel length is marked orthographically by doubling the vowel. In Ute, the length of a vowel is often phonemic, and relevant for determining meaning. For example, whca-y, meaning 'wrapping,' versus whcáa-y, meaning 'swirling'. In some cases, however, the difference between a long and a short vowel is purely phonetic, and does not change word meaning. Ute devoices vowels in certain phonological or grammatical environments, as described in later sections. Devoiced vowels are marked in the orthography by underlining them, or, when the identity of the underlying vowel has been lost, with the letter [h].
Here bold text indicates a practical orthographic representation, while the IPA representation is included in brackets.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |||
| High | i pronounced as /link/ | ʉ pronounced as /link/ | u pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Mid | ɵ pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| a pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
Southern Ute consonants are given in the table below. As above, orthographic representations are bold and the IPA representations are in brackets. All stops in Ute are voiceless. Thus, g here does not indicate a voiced velar stop but rather a voiced velar fricative, similar to luego in Spanish. Also similar to Spanish is the voiced bilabial fricative v, as in the Spanish phrase la verdad, in contrast with the voiced labiodental fricative pronounced as /[v]/ which does not appear in Ute. The velar sounds k and g have uvular allophones: k becomes either a voiceless uvular stop pronounced as /[q]/ or a voiceless uvular fricative pronounced as /[χ]/ when either between two vowels or adjacent to the vowel pronounced as /[o]/; likewise g becomes a voiced uvular fricative pronounced as /[ʁ]/ under the same conditions. Either k or g can become a voiceless velar fricative pronounced as /[x]/ when before a de-voiced word ending.
Note here that coronals are produced as dental sounds rather than the alveolar sounds used in English.