North Straits Salish language

Last updated
North Straits Salish
SENĆOŦEN / Malchosen / Siʔneməš / Lekwungen / Semiahmoo / T’Sou-ke
Region Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada; Washington, United States
Native speakers
105 (2016 census) [1]
Salishan
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3 str
Glottolog stra1244
ELP Northern Straits Salish
North Straits Salish map.svg
Lang Status 20-CR.svg
Northern Straits Salish is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Northern Straits Salish (also referred to as North Straits Salish) [2] is a language composed of several mutually-intelligible dialects within the Coast Salish language family spoken in western Washington and British Columbia. The various dialects of Northern Straits Salish are often referred to as separate languages, both in historic and modern times, and although their similarities are recognized by its speakers, there is no word for the language as a whole.

Contents

Dialects

The dialects of Northern Straits are as follows: [3] () marks a dialect that has no native speakers.

Classification

Northern Straits is a Salishan language within the Coast Salish branch. Among the Coast Salish languages, Northern Straits is one of the two languages in the Straits Salish branch, the other being Klallam. Klallam and Northern Straits are very closely related, but have lost mutual intelligibility. [2]

Historians have historically classified the various dialects of Northern Straits and Klallam together in many ways. Linguist George Gibbs, in 1863, classified Klallam, Sooke, and Songhees as being one language, Lummi, Saanich, and Semiahmoo being another language, and Samish being a dialect of another Coast Salish language, Lushootseed. One missionary, Myron Eells, believed that Lummi was a dialect of Klallam. German anthropologist Franz Boas believed that Klallam was part of the same language as Northern Straits. Furthermore, Charles Hill-Tout, a Canadian anthropologist, classified Sooke, Saanich, Songhees, Lummi, and Klallam as one language called "Lekonenen," and Songhees as another called "Lekunen."[ clarification needed ] What Hill-Tout believed to be the names of the languages were actually derived from the words lək̓ʷəŋiʔnəŋ (the Songhees name for Songhees dialect) and lək̓ʷəŋən (the Songhees name for the Songhees people). Despite this, Klallam and the dialects of Northern Straits Salish are not mutually intelligible. [2]

Notes

  1. NAPA: sənčáθən
  2. NAPA: xʷsénəčqən

Related Research Articles

In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as un-, -ation, anti-, pre- etc., introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to. Inflectional affixes introduce a syntactic change, such as singular into plural, or present simple tense into present continuous or past tense by adding -ing, -ed to an English word. All of them are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes.

Metathesis is the transposition of sounds or syllables in a word or of words in a sentence. Most commonly, it refers to the interchange of two or more contiguous segments or syllables, known as adjacent metathesis or local metathesis:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salishan languages</span> Indigenous language family of western Canada and the US

The Salishan languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America. They are characterised by agglutinativity and syllabic consonants. For instance the Nuxalk word clhp’xwlhtlhplhhskwts’, meaning "he had had [in his possession] a bunchberry plant", has twelve obstruent consonants in a row with no phonetic or phonemic vowels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klallam people</span> Coast Salish ethnic group

The Klallam are a Coast Salish people Indigenous to the northern Olympic Peninsula. The language of the Klallam is the Klallam language, a language closely related to the North Straits Salish languages. The Klallam are today citizens of four recognized bands: Three federally-recognized tribes in the United States and one band government in Canada. Two Klallam tribes, the Jamestown S'Klallam and Lower Elwha Klallam, live on the Olympic Peninsula, and one, the Port Gamble S'Klallam, on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state. In Canada, the Scia'new First Nation is based at Becher Bay on southern Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Lushootseed, historically known as Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish, or Skagit-Nisqually, is a Central Coast Salish language of the Salishan language family. Lushootseed is the general name for the dialect continuum composed of two main dialects, Northern Lushootseed and Southern Lushootseed, which are further separated into smaller sub-dialects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coast Salish languages</span> Branch of the Salishan languages of western North America

The Coast Salish languages, also known as the Central Salish languages, are a branch of the Salishan language family. These languages are spoken by First Nations or Native American peoples inhabiting the Pacific Northwest, in the territory that is now known as the southwest coast of British Columbia around the Strait of Georgia and Washington State around Puget Sound. The term "Coast Salish" also refers to the cultures in British Columbia and Washington who speak one of these languages or dialects.

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The Saanich or W̱sáneć are indigenous nations from the north coast of the Gulf and San Juan Islands, southern Vancouver Island and the southern edge of the Lower Mainland in British Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klallam language</span> Salishan language of North America

Klallam,Clallam, Ns'Klallam or S'klallam, is a Straits Salishan language historically spoken by the Klallam people at Becher Bay on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. The last native speaker of Klallam as a first language died in 2014, but there is a growing group of speakers of Klallam as a second language.

Brent Douglas Galloway was an American linguist noted for his work with endangered Amerindian languages, specializing in several of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. He completed his degrees through a doctorate in linguistics in 1977 at the University of California, Berkeley, undertaking extensive fieldwork in that period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">T'Sou-ke Nation</span> First Nations government in British Columbia

The T'sou-ke Nation of the Coast Salish peoples, is a band government whose reserve community is located on Vancouver Island, in the province of British Columbia, Canada. In February 2013, the T'sou-ke Nation had 251 registered members, with two reserves around the Sooke Basin on the Strait of Juan de Fuca at the southern end of Vancouver Island, with a total area of 67 hectares. The T'Souk-e people are the namesake of the town of Sooke, British Columbia and its surrounding harbour and basin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saanich dialect</span> Language of the Saanich people of North America

Saanich is the language of the First Nations Saanich people in the Pacific Northwest region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan language in the Northern Straits dialect continuum, the varieties of which are closely related to the Klallam language.

The Samish are a Native American people who live in the U.S. state of Washington. They are a Central Coast Salish people. Through the years, they were assigned to reservations dominated by other Tribes, for instance, the Swinomish Indians of the Swinomish Reservation of Washington and the Tulalip Tribes of the Tulalip Reservation. They are also enrolled in the Samish Indian Nation, formerly known as the Samish Indian Tribe, which regained federal recognition in 1996.

Lummi is a dialect of the North Straits Salish language traditionally spoken by the Lummi people of northwest Washington, in the United States. Although traditionally referred to as a language, it is mutually intelligible with the other dialects of North Straits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salish peoples</span> Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitchell Bay Band of the San Juan Islands</span>

The Mitchell Bay Band of the San Juan Islands is an Indigenous Coast Salish community based in the San Juan Islands of Washington, United States. The community was first referred to as the Mitchell Bay Tribe by Office of Indian Affairs agent Charles Roblin in his 1919 Census of Unenrolled Indians, in reference to one of several bays with historically significant indigenous populations.

Samish is a dialect of the North Straits Salish dialect continuum spoken by the Indigenous Samish people of the Pacific Northwest. Samish is traditionally referred to as a language, but it is mutually intelligible with the other dialects of North Straits Salish. Samish is a Coast Salish language and is closely related to other languages in that family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lummi people</span> Indigenous people of western Washington (state)

The Lummi are a Central Coast Salish people Indigenous to western Washington, namely parts of the San Juan Islands and the mainland near what is now Bellingham, Washington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Songhees dialect</span> Variety of Northern Straits Salish

Lekwungen, is a variety of North Straits Salish, a Salishan language spoken by the Lekwungen on Vancouver Island in British Columbia in Canada and on San Juan Island in the State of Washington in the United States. As of 2018, there was only one elderly native speaker of lək̓ʷəŋiʔnəŋ, but there are ongoing movements to revitalize it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">T'Sou-ke dialect</span> Dialect of North Straits Salish

T'Sou-ke, also known as Sooke, is the dialect of the North Straits Salish language spoken by the T'Sou-ke people of Vancouver Island in British Columba. As of 2014, there were no fluent speakers, although there were at least ten speakers remaining who could somewhat speak and understand the language.

References

  1. Canada, Government of Canada, Statistics (28 March 2018). "Aboriginal Mother Tongue (90)". www12.statcan.gc.ca. Retrieved 2018-05-21.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. 1 2 3 Montler, Timothy (1999). "Language and Dialect Variation in Straits Salishan". Anthropological Linguistics. 41 (4): 462–502. ISSN   0003-5483. JSTOR   30028724.
  3. Montler 1999, p. 462-463.
  4. "Human relations". SENĆOŦEN Word List. Retrieved 2024-03-16.
  5. "Language". Samish Indian Nation. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  6. Patterson, Travis (2011-06-01). "Traditional language comes alive on breakwater". Victoria News. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2013-06-02.
  7. "lək̓ʷəŋən Language Reawaken". Songhees Nation. Retrieved 2024-03-16.

Bibliography