Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language
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Eslha7an
Xwemelch'stn
Xwáýxway
Senakw
Schenks
Chekwelhp
Chiyakmesh
St'a7mes
| Squamish Sḵwx̱wú7mesh snichim |
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|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | sqʷχʷuʔməʃ sniʧim | |
| Spoken in: | Canada | |
| Region: | British Columbia | |
| Total speakers: | ≈12-15[1] | |
| Language family: | Salishan Squamish |
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| 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.
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[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
[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.
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