North Straits Salish language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| North Straits Salish | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada; Washington, USA | |
| Total speakers: | ~20 | |
| Language family: | Salishan Coast Central Straits North Straits Salish |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | sal | |
| ISO 639-3: | str | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
North Straits Salish is a Salishan language which includes the dialects of Lummi, Samish, Saanich, Semiahmoo, Songish, and Sooke. Although they are mutually intelligible, each dialect is traditionally referred to as if they were separate languages, and there is no native term to encompass them all.
North Straits along with Klallam form the Straits Salish branch of the Central Coast Salish languages. Alternatively, Straits Salish may be considered to be a single language, with Klallam and the various varieties of North Straits as its dialects, but Klallam and North Straits are not usually considered to be mutually intelligible.
Contents |
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Vowels
 |
This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it. |
[edit] Consonants
The following table includes all the sounds found in the North Straits dialects. No one dialect includes them all.
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Lateral Alveolar |
Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Rounded | Plain | Rounded | |||||||||
| Stop | Plain | p | t | (k) | kʷ | q | qʷ | ʔ | ||||
| Glottalized | pʼ | tʼ | kʷʼ | qʼ | qʷʼ | |||||||
| Affricate | Plain | ts | tʃ | |||||||||
| Glottalized | ts̪ʼ | tsʼ | tɬʼ | tʃʼ | ||||||||
| Fricative | s̪ | s | ɬ | ʃ | xʷ | χ | χʷ | h | ||||
| Nasal | Plain | m | n | ɴ | ɴʷ | |||||||
| Glottalized | (mʼ) | (nʼ) | (ɴʼ) | (ɴʷʼ) | ||||||||
| Approximant | Plain | l | j | w | ||||||||
| Glottalized | (lʼ) | (jʼ) | (wʼ) | |||||||||
The unrounded velar stop /k/ is found only in loanwords in all dialects.
Saanich has turned former /ts tsʼ/ into /s̪ ts̪ʼ/, respectively. It is the only dialect to have /s̪ ts̪ʼ/. /s̪ ts̪ʼ/ are also written /θ tθʼ/, although they are grooved, not interdental.
Sooke has turned former /l/ into /j/. While /l/ occurs in native words in other dialects, in Sooke it is only present in loanwords.
The uvular nasals /ɴ ɴʷ/ are also written /ŋ ŋʷ/, but they are not velar.
The status of the glottalized resonants /mʼ nʼ ɴʼ ɴʷʼ lʼ jʼ wʼ/ is not agreed upon. Some linguists analyse them as unit phonemes, others as sequences of a plain resonant and a glottal stop /ʔ/.
[edit] References
- Laurence C. Thompson; M. Terry Thompson; Barbara S. Efrat (1974). "Some Phonological Developments in Straits Salish". International Journal of American Linguistics 40 (3): 182–196.
