Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language

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Squamish Sḵwx̱wú7mesh snichim
Pronunciation:	sqʷχʷuʔməʃ sniʧim
Spoken in:	Canada
Region:	British Columbia
Total speakers:	≈12-15[1]
Language family:	Salishan  Squamish
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3:	squ
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Sḵwxwú7mesh language (also called Squamish; in Sḵwxwú7mesh, Sḵwxwú7mesh snichim, meaning "Sḵwxwú7mesh language"), is of the Coast Salish language family spoken by Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish) people of southwestern British Columbia, Canada, centred on their reserve communities in the town of Squamish and the cities of North Vancouver and West Vancouver. An archaic historical rendering of "Sḵwxwú7mesh" is "Sko-ko-mish" but this should not be confused with the name of the Skokomish people of Washington state.

Anthropologists and linguists who have worked on the Sḵwxwú7mesh language go back to the 1880s. The first collection of words was done by a German anthropologists Franz Boas. The following decade another anthropologists, Charles Hill-Tout, also collected some Sḵwxwú7mesh words, sentences, and stories. In the 1930s another anthropologists, Homer Barnett, worked with Jimmy Frank. He collected information about traditional Sḵwxwú7mesh culture. Some Sḵwxwú7mesh words were a part of this. Then in the 1950s a Dutch linguist, Aert J. Kuipers, worked on the first comprehensive grammar of the Sḵwxwú7mesh language. In 1968 the BC Language Project undertook more documentation of the Sḵwxwú7mesh language and culture. Randy Bouchard and Dorthy Kennedy were the main collaborators on this project. They devised the present writing system that is used for the Sḵwxwú7mesh language.

Sḵwxwú7mesh snichim (snichim means "language") is most closely related to the Sháshíshálh, Halkomelem and Nooksack (see Nowxs'a7aq language) languages.

Contents 1 Phonology 2 See also 3 References 4 Bibliography

[edit] Phonology

The phonemes of Sḵwxwú7mesh, given in the Sḵwxwú7mesh alphabet, are as follows:^[2]

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Alveolar affricate	Alveolar lateral	Postalveolar	Velar	Labio-velar	Uvular	Labio-uvular	Glottal
Stop and affricate	Plain	p	t	ts		ch	(k)	kw	ḵ	ḵw	7
	Ejective	p’	t’	ts’	lh’	ch’	(k’)	kw’	ḵ’	ḵw’
Fricative			s		lh	sh		xw	x̱	x̱w
Nasal and approximant	Plain	m	n		l	y		w			h
	Glottalized	m’	n’		l’	y’		w’			h’

There are also four vowel phonemes, /a/, /i/, /u/, and /ə/ (spelled respectively a, i, u, and e).

[edit] See also

• Sḵwxwú7mesh people
• Squamish Nation

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Dyck, Ruth Anne (2004). Prosodic and Morphological Factors in Squamish (Sḵwxwú7mesh) Stress Assignment. Dissertation for University of Victoria. Retrieved online (PDF) on August 14, 2007.