Language Families

Uto-Aztecan

YOO-toh-az-TEK-en (/ˌjuːtoʊæzˈtɛkən/)

Citation Formats

General Reference

Language Atlas. "Uto-Aztecan." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-language.interactiveatlas.org/language-families/uto-aztecan.

APA Style

Language Atlas. (n.d.). Uto-Aztecan. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-language.interactiveatlas.org/language-families/uto-aztecan

BibTeX

@misc{languageatlas-uto-aztecan,
  author = {Language Atlas},
  title = {Uto-Aztecan},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-language.interactiveatlas.org/language-families/uto-aztecan},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Uto-Aztecan is a language family of some sixty languages spoken across the western United States and Mexico, uniting the Numic languages of the Great Basin, Hopi, the Tepiman and Taracahitic languages of northwestern Mexico, and the Aztecan (Nahuan) languages of central Mexico, whose best known member is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire.

Facts

Region

The western United States (Great Basin, Southwest) and Mexico, from Sonora and Chihuahua south through central Mexico 1

Speaker Count

1,910,000 1

Aggregate total across all living Uto-Aztecan languages, dominated by the Nahuan branch; figure as of the mid-2010s, drawn from national census and survey data as compiled by Ethnologue.

Proto-Language Status

Proto-Uto-Aztecan is reconstructed via the comparative method, with a proposed homeland in the upland border region of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora and Chihuahua roughly five thousand years before present. The split between a Northern branch (including Hopi) and a Southern branch (including the Aztecan languages) is well established, though finer subgrouping remains debated among specialists. 2

Cross-Tradition Connections