Mono language (California)

Mono
Mono
Native to	United States
Region	California
Ethnicity	Mono and Owens Valley Paiute
Native speakers	(37 cited 1994)
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Northern Numic Western Mono; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mnr
Glottolog	mono1275
ELP	Mono (United States)
	Mono is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Mono (/ˈmoʊnoʊ/ MOH-noh) is a Native American language of the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, the ancestral language of the Mono people. Mono consists of two dialects, Eastern and Western. The name "Monachi" is commonly used in reference to Western Mono and "Owens Valley Paiute" in reference to Eastern Mono.^[2] In 1925, Alfred Kroeber estimated that Mono had 3,000 to 4,000 speakers. As of 1994^[update], only 37 elderly people spoke Mono as their first language.^[1] It is classified as critically endangered by UNESCO.^[3] It is spoken in the southern Sierra Nevada, the Mono Basin, and the Owens Valley of central-eastern California. Mono is most closely related to Northern Paiute; these two are classified as the Western group of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.^[2]^[4]

^ ^a ^b Hinton 1994, p. 30.
^ ^a ^b "Mono." Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley. 2009-2010 (retrieved 6 May 2010)
^ "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger".
^ Klein 1959.