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| Nooksack Lhéchalosem |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Whatcom County | |
| Language extinction: | 1988 | |
| Language family: | Indigenous American Salish Coast Salish Nooksack |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | – | |
| ISO 639-3: | none | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Nooksack language (Lhéchalosem) is a Coast Salish language spoken by the Nooksack Indians of northwestern Washington State in the United States, centred in Whatcom County.
The Nooksack language belonged to the Coast Salishan family of Native American but became extinct around 1988. In the 1970s the Salishan linguist Brent Galloway worked closely with the last remaining fluent speaker and is currently completing a dictionary of the language.
Nooksack is most closely related to Squamish, Sháshíshálhem (Sechelt), and Halkomelem, which are all spoken in nearby parts of British Columbia, Canada.
Contents |
Phonology
Vowels
The following table includes all the vowel sounds found in the Nooksack language.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ||
| Mid | ɵ | ʌ, o | |
| Open | æ |
Consonants
The following table includes all the consonant sounds found in the Nooksack language.
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Lateral Alveolar |
Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Rounded | Plain | Rounded | |||||||||
| Stop | Plain | p | t | k | kʷ | q | qʷ | ʔ | ||||
| Ejective | pʼ | tʼ | kʷʼ | qʼ | qʷʼ | |||||||
| Affricate | Plain | t͡s | tʃ | |||||||||
| Ejective | t͡sʼ | t͡ɬʼ | tʃʼ | |||||||||
| Fricative | Plain | s | ɬ | ʃ | x | xʷ | χ | χʷ | h | |||
| Ejective | ɬʼ | |||||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||
| Approximant | Plain | l | j | w | ||||||||
| Ejective | jʼ | |||||||||||
Alphabet
The names of letters in the Nooksack alphabet are based on the Latin alphabet.
| letter | name |
|---|---|
| A, a | ayʔ |
| C, c | siʔ |
| E, e | iiʔ |
| H, h | áyich |
| I, i | iyʔ |
| K, k | kay |
| L, l | al |
| M, m | am |
| N, n | an |
| O, o | oʔ |
| P, p | piʔ |
| Q, q | tl’epótsin kay |
| S, s | as |
| T, t | tiʔ |
| U, u | yiwʔ |
| W, w | tsemám yiwʔ |
| X, x | aʔqs |
| X̱, x̱ | tl’epótsin aʔqs |
| Y, y | wayʔ |
| ʔ | hóy qen |
Orthography
| (di)graph | sound | (di)graph | sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | æ | qw | qʷ |
| ch | tʃ | qw’ | qʷ’ |
| ch’ | tʃ’ | s | s |
| e | ʌ | sh | ʃ |
| h | h | t | t |
| i | i | t’ | t’ |
| k | k | ts | t͡s |
| kw | kʷ | ts’ | t͡s’ |
| kw’ | kʷ’ | tl’ | t͡ɬ’ |
| l | l | u | ɵ |
| lh | ɬ | w | w |
| lh’ | ɬ’ | x | x |
| m | m | xw | xʷ |
| n | n | x̱ | χ |
| o | o | x̱w | χʷ |
| p | p | y | j |
| p’ | p’ | y’ | j’ |
| q | q | ʔ | ʔ |
| q’ | q’ |
In addition the symbol "ː" is used to indicated elongated vowels and consonants (i.e, mː, aː, etc.). An acute accent (´) is placed over the accented syllable.
References
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