The name Kashaya corresponds to words in neighboring languages with meanings such as "skillful" and "expert gambler".

In the orthography established by Robert Oswalt, long vowels are represented by a raised dot (ꞏ).

The coronal stops differ not so much in the location of the contact against the top of the mouth as in the configuration of the tongue.

In most contexts, the rhyme consists of a vowel that may be long or followed by a single consonant in the coda, resulting in the possible syllables CV, CV꞉, and CVC.

According to the analysis in Buckley (1994), iambs are constructed from left to right and the leftmost foot generally receives the main stress: (momácʰ)(mela) "I ran in", (kél)(macʰ) "he is peeking in there".

The initial syllable is extrametrical unless the word begins with a monosyllabic root, as in the case of /mo/ "run".

Combined with extrametricality, this can lead to stress as far in as the fifth syllable: mu(naci꞉)(ducé꞉)du "always be too shy" from the root /muna꞉c/ "be shy"; this verb forms a minimal pair with /munac/ "gather", which lacks stress shift in mu(nací꞉)(duce꞉)du "always gather".

Kashaya can be classified as a polysynthetic language; it is primarily suffixing but has an important set of instrumental prefixes on verbs.

The first person has several allomorphs including the prefix ʔa꞉- and CV꞉ reduplication; the latter is informal and is associated with phonologically less marked stems, no doubt derived historically from child pronunciations.

A sampling of verb suffixes: Position class XIV (Evidentials, Modals, Imperatives, Futures, Absolutive, Adverbializers) represents the largest set of suffixes and is the only slot that is obligatorily filled in every verb.

A few examples of verbs with many affixes, the root shown in bold: The basic word order of Kashaya is quite flexible in main clauses; however, the default location for the verb is final, and this position is required in subordinate clauses.

Oswalt (1961) reports that younger speakers tend to favor the SVO order typical of English.

Most nouns are marked with the subjective ʔem or the objective ʔel; these are morphologically complex and contain the actual case markers /m/ and /l/, found with verbal expressions.