[3] Ute is part of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.

[4] 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.

Northern Ute differs from Southern and Central in some lexical and phonological areas.

In Ute, the length of a vowel is often phonemic, and relevant for determining meaning.

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.

Also similar to Spanish is the voiced bilabial fricative v, as in the Spanish phrase la verdad, in contrast with the voiced labiodental fricative [v] which does not appear in Ute.

Ute has several phonological processes that affect the realization of underlying phonemes.

Affixes are mostly suffixes, but there are three major types of prefixes for verbs and one for nouns.

The consonant pairs p/v and t/r were once allophones, but are no longer predictable; this produces the suffixes separated by a slash.

Some older animate nouns have a silent final vowel rather than an explicit suffix.

Finally, some nouns show plurality by reduplication of the first syllable in combination with the -u suffix, such as in táa-ta'wa-chi-u "men" from ta'wa-chi.

Alternatively, instead of the prefix, the full form kách- can appear as a separate word somewhere before the verb being negated.

Other suffixes include -ti, -ku, and -ta, which mark the causative, benefactive, and passive case respectively.

As described above in morphology, nouns and other words can be incorporated as prefixes of verbs to specify the method of action: for example, wii-chi-m tuka-y-aqh, "s/he eats it with a knife" can incorporate wii-chi-m, "knife", into the verb tuka-y-aqh, "eats" to produce wii-tuka-y-aqh, "s/he is knife-eating it".