North Straits Salish language

North Straits Salish
Region	Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada; Washington, USA
Native speakers	12 (2007–2014)[1]
Language family	Salishan Coast Central Straits Salish North Straits Salish
Dialects	Lummi Saanich Samish Semiahmoo Sooke Songhees
Language codes
ISO 639-3	str
Glottolog	stra1244[2]

North Straits Salish is a Salish language which includes the dialects of

• Lummi (AKA Xwlemiʼchosen, xʷləmiʔčósən) (†)
• Saanich (AKA SENĆOŦEN, sənčáθən, sénəčqən)
• Samish (AKA Siʔneməš) (†)
• Semiahmoo (SEMYOME) (AKA Tah-tu-lo) (†)
• T'sou-ke or Sooke (AKA Tʼsou-ke, c̓awk) (†)
• Songhees (AKA Lək̓ʷəŋín̓əŋ or Lekwungen or Songish), three speakers (2011)^[3]

Although they are mutually intelligible, each dialect is traditionally referred to as if it were a separate language, and there is no native term to encompass them all.

North Straits, along with Klallam, forms the Straits Salish branch of the Central Coast Salish languages. Klallam and North Straits are very closely related, but not mutually intelligible.

See Saanich dialect for the phonology.

References

1. North Straits Salish at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Straits Salish". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Patterson, Travis (2011-06-01). "Traditional language comes alive on breakwater". Victoria News. Retrieved 2013-06-02.

See also

• 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:10.1086/465311.
• Timothy Montler (1999). "Language and dialect variation in Straits Salishan". Anthropological Linguistics 41 (4): 462–502.

External links

• An Outline of the Morphology and Phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish
• Saanich, North Straits Salish Classified Word List