Konomihu is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken in northern California. There may have been only a few speakers even before contact, and they self-identified as Shasta by the turn of the 20th century.[2]
Konomihu may have been the most divergent of the Shastan family, although it is difficult to tell, as there is little material on the language.[3] Kroeber noted that "it is still questionable whether their speech is more properly a highly specialized aberration of Shasta or of an ancient and independent but moribund branch of Hokan from which Karok and Chimariko are descended together with Shasta." A wordlist was collected by Angulo in 1928, but not published;[4] some words are documented and compared by Shasta proper by Shirley Silver in Shasta and Konomihu in 1980.
^Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Konomihu". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Languages of California
