Saanich (linguistics)

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Saanich (linguistics)

Saanich (also , written as SENCOTEN in Saanich orthographyOrthography

The orthography of a language is the set of symbols used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to...
) is the language of the Native AmericanIndigenous peoples of the Americas

The term Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the inhabitants of the Americas before the European discovery of the...
SaanichSaanich

The Saanich are a Native American/First Nations group from the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and the so...
people. Saanich is a member of a dialect continuumFacts About Dialect continuum

A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas th...
called Northern Straits which is a Coast SalishanSalishan languages

The Salishan languages are a group of languages of western Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the United States....
language. North StraitsNorth Straits Salish language

North Straits Salish is a Salishan language which includes the dialects of Lummi, Samish, Saanich, Semi...
varietiesVariety (linguistics)

A variety of a language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently....
are closely related to the Klallam languageKlallam language

Klallam or Clallam is a nearly extinct Straits Salishan language that was traditionally spoken by the Klallam peoples ...
.

Sounds

Vowels

There is considerable variation among the dialects in the mid vowels with ranging from to and being higher in palatal environments, rounded in labialized environments, and when stressed.

	Front	Central	Back
High
Mid
Low

Consonants

The following table includes all the sounds found in the North Straits dialects. No one dialect includes them all.

		VelarVelar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue...		UvularUvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mout...
		Plain	Rounded	Plain	Rounded
StopStop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract....	Plain
	GlottalizedEjective consonant Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language....
AffricateFacts About Affricate consonant Affricate consonants begin as stops , such as or ) but release as a fricative such as or or, in a couple of languages, in...	Plain
	GlottalizedEjective consonant Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language....
FricativeFricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together....
NasalNasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing a...	Plain
	GlottalizedGlottalization See also Glottalic consonantGlottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of...
ApproximantApproximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants....	Plain
	GlottalizedGlottalization See also Glottalic consonantGlottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of...

The unrounded velar stop is found only in loanwordLoanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation....
s, such as CEPU "coat", from FrenchFrench language

French is the third-largest of the Romance languages in terms of number of native speakers, after Spanish and Portuguese, b...
.

are also written , although they are not usually interdentalInterdental consonant

Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors....
. The uvular nasals are also written , but they are not velar.

The status of the glottalized resonants is not agreed upon. Some linguists analyse them as unit phonemePhoneme

In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones that are cognitively equivalent....
s, others as sequences of a plain resonant and a glottal stopGlottal stop Summary

The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages....
.

Writing system

The Saanich orthography was created by Dave Elliot in 1978. It uses only uppercase letters, with one exception: the letter s, which marks the third person possessive suffix.

A	ÁA The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a . ...		B	C	CC C or c is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate, and is equivalent to ...		D	E	H

I	ÍI The letter I is the ninth letter in the Latin alphabet....	J	K				L		M

N		O	P	Q	S	SS S is the nineteenth letter in the Latin alphabet....	T

TT Summary The letter T is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, preceded by s and followed by u....	U	W		X		Y	Z	s
							?

¹The K with a bar has not yet been adopted by UnicodeUnicode

Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consis...
.

The glottal stopGlottal stop

The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages....
is not always indicated, but may be written with a commaComma

Comma can mean:* Comma * Comma , a kind of interval...
: ,.

Plain and glottalized resonants are not distinguished.

The vowel is usually written Á, unless it occurs next to an uvular consonant , where it is written A.

Grammar

Metathesis

In Saanich, metathesisMetathesis (linguistics) Overview

Metathesis is a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word....
is used as a grammatical devise to indicate "actual" aspectGrammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state....
. The actual aspect is most often translated into English as a be …-ing progressive. The actual aspect is derived from the "nonactual" verb form by a CV ? VC metathesis process (i.e. consonant metathesizes with vowel).

External links

(1986) (Timothy Montler's site)

(1991) (Timothy Montler's site)
(Chris Harvey's Native Language, Font & Keyboard)
(First Voices)

Bibliography

Bill, Adriane; Cayou, Roxanne; & Jim, Jacquelin. (2003). ' [One green tree]. Victoria, B.C.: First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation & Tribal School. ISBN 1-4120-0626-0.
Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
Montler, Timothy. (1986). An outline of the morphology and phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish. Occasional Papers in Linguistics (No. 4). Missoula, MT: University of Montana Linguistics Laboratory. (Web version of the author's PhD dissertation, University of Hawaii).
Montler, Timothy. (1996). Languages and dialects in Straits Salishan. Proceedings of the International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages, 31, 249-256.
Montler, Timothy. (1999). Language and dialect variation in Straits Salishan. Anthropological linguistics, 41 (4), 462-502.
Thompson, Laurence; Thompson, M. Terry; & Efrat, Barbara. (1974). Some phonological developments in Straits Salish. International Journal of American Linguistics, 40, 182-196.

[Claxton, Earl, Sr.]; & [Elliot, John, Sr.]. (1994). Reef Net Technology of the Saltwater People. Brentwood Bay, B.C.: Saanich Indian School Board.