Southern Tsimshian, (pronounced: ) or ,
is the southern dialect of the
Tsimshian language, spoken by the
Gitga'ata and
Kitasoo Tsimshians in
Klemtu
Klemtu is an unincorporated community on Swindle Island in the coastal fjords of British Columbia, Canada. It is located on Kitasoo Indian Reserve No. 1.
Klemtu is the home of the Kitasoo tribe of Tsimshians, originally from Kitasu Bay, and t ...
,
B.C. It became extinct with the death of the last remaining speaker, Violet Neasloss.
is close to
Coast Tsimshian
Tsimshian, known by its speakers as Sm'álgyax, is a dialect of the Tsimshian language spoken in northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. ''Sm'algyax'' means literally "real or true language."
The linguist Tonya Stebbins estimat ...
and has been described as a highly conservative dialect, however the two may not have been mutually intelligible with Coast Tsimshian. The name means "the language beside."
Specialist
John Asher Dunn wrote several articles on the language, from which the term Southern Tsimshian arose.
Notes
Further reading
{{Penutian languages
Tsimshianic languages
Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast
Indigenous languages of Alaska
First Nations languages in Canada
Languages extinct in the 2010s
Extinct languages of North America