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
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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." 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]

See also

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. The first ones, such as -un, -ation, anti-, pre- etc, introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to. The latter ones 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.

Lushootseed, formerly 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

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

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">T'Sou-ke Nation</span>

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.

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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.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Songhees</span> First Nation living in Victoria area, British Columbia

The Lekwungen or Lekungen nation are an Indigenous North American Coast Salish people who reside on southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia in the Greater Victoria area. Their government is the Songhees First Nation, a member of the Te'mexw Treaty Association and the Naut'sa Mawt Tribal Council. Their traditional language is Lekwungen, a dialect of the North Straits Salish language.

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

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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.

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.
  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.