Ditidaht (also Nitinaht, Nitinat, Southern Nootkan) or diitiidʔaaʔtx̣ is a South

Wakashan Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As is typical of the Nor ...

(Nootkan) language spoken on the southern part of

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest by ...

. Nitinaht is related to the other South

Wakashan languages Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As is typical of the Nor ...

Makah The Makah (; Klallam: ''màq̓áʔa'')Renker, Ann M., and Gunther, Erna (1990). "Makah". In "Northwest Coast", ed. Wayne Suttles. Vol. 7 of '' Handbook of North American Indians'', ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Instit ...

and the neighboring

Nuu-chah-nulth The Nuu-chah-nulth (; Nuučaan̓uł: ), also formerly referred to as the Nootka, Nutka, Aht, Nuuchahnulth or Tahkaht, are one of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast in Canada. The term Nuu-chah-nulth is used to describe fifte ...

Status and history

The number of native Ditidaht speakers dwindled from about thirty in the 1990sMithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. to just eight by 2006.Kwong, Matthew. (2006-07-22).
Standing by their words
.

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

. In 2003 the Ditidaht council approved construction of a $4.2 million community school to teach students on the Ditidaht ( Malachan) reserve their language and culture from kindergarten to Grade 12. The program was successful in its first years and produced its first high-school graduate in 2005. In 2014, the number of fluent Ditidaht speakers was 7, the number of individuals who have a good grasp on the language 6, and there were 55 people learning the language. Ditidaht has been the subject of considerable linguistic research including the publication of texts and, in 1981, an introductory university-level textbook.

Characteristics

The reason for the unusual discrepancy in the names ''Nitinaht'' and ''Ditidaht'' is that when the Ditidaht people were first contacted by Europeans, they had

nasal consonants In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast major ...

(/m/, /n/) in their language. Their

autonym Autonym may refer to: * Autonym, the name used by a person to refer to themselves or their language; see Exonym and endonym * Autonym (botany), an automatically created infrageneric or infraspecific name See also * Nominotypical subspecies, in zo ...

of ''Nitinaht'' was what the Europeans recorded for them and their language. Soon afterward the consonants shifted to voiced plosives (/b/, /d/) as part of an areal trend, so the people came to call themselves ''Ditidaht''. Ditidaht is thus one of only a handful of languages in the world that do not have

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Vowels are phonemically transcribed as and . They are noted phonetically as:

Notes

External links

Ditidaht Language on First Nations Languages of British Columbia site Ditidaht Language on FirstVoices.ca
{{Languages of Canada Ditidaht First Nation Wakashan languages Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast First Nations languages in Canada Endangered Wakashan languages