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| 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. | ||
North Straits Salish is a Salish language family 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. Klallam and North Straits are very closely related, but not mutually intelligible.
Contents |
Phonology
Vowels
There is considerable variation among the dialects in the non-high vowels: /e/ ranges from [e] to [æ]; /ə/ is higher in palatal environments, rounded in labialized environments, and [ʌ] when stressed; and /a/ ranges to [ɑ], [ɒ], and [ɔ].
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ||
| Mid | e | ə | |
| Low | a |
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 | ||||||||
| Glottalized | (mʼ) | (nʼ) | (ɴʼ) | |||||||||
| 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 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 ɴʼ/ are also written /ŋ ŋʼ/, but they are not velar.
The status of the glottalized resonants /mʼ nʼ ɴʼ 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/.
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. doi:.
- Timothy Montler (1999). "Language and dialect variation in Straits Salishan". Anthropological Linguistics 41 (4): 462–502.
External links
- Ethnologue report for language code:str
- An Outline of the Morphology and Phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish
- Saanich, North Straits Salish Classified Word List
