Saanich (also Sənčáθən, written as in Saanich

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

and pronounced ) is the language of the

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

Saanich people The Saanich or (, ''Xwsenəč'') are indigenous nations from the north coast of the Gulf and San Juan Islands, southern Vancouver Island and the southern edge of the Lower Mainland in British Columbia. Saanich bands * – Malahat First Nation ...

in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...

region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast

Salishan The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by ...

language in the Northern Straits

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

, the

varieties Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

of which are closely related to the

Klallam language Klallam, Clallam, Ns'Klallam or S'klallam (endonym: Nəxʷsƛ̓ay̓əmúcən), is a Straits Salishan language that was traditionally spoken by the Klallam peoples at Becher Bay on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and across the Strait of Ju ...

Language revitalization efforts

"The School Board, together with the

FirstVoices FirstVoices is a web-based project to support Indigenous peoples' teaching and archiving of language and culture. It is administered by the First Peoples' Cultural Council in British Columbia (B.C.). FirstVoices was initially launched in 2003 to a ...

program for revitalizing Aboriginal languages, is working to teach a new generation to speak " at the ȽÁU,WELṈEW̱ Tribal School.

SENĆOŦEN texting, mobile app and portal

A Saanich texting app was released in 2012. A SENĆOŦEN iPhone app was released in October 2011. An online dictionary, phrasebook, and language learning portal is available at the First Voices SENĆOŦEN Community Portal.

Phonology

Vowels

Saanich has no rounded vowels in native vocabulary. As in many languages, vowels are strongly affected by post-velar consonants.

Consonants

The following table includes all the sounds found in the North Straits dialects. No one dialect includes them all. Plosives are not aspirated, but are not voiced either. Ejectives have weak glottalization. The dentals are often written , , but this is inaccurate, as they are

laminal A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...

sibilants, , and are only rarely

interdental Interdental consonants are produced by placing the tip of the tongue between the upper and lower front teeth. That differs from dental consonants, which are articulated with the tongue against the ''back'' of the upper incisors. No language is kn ...

. The alveolars , on the other hand, are

apical Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to: *Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology) *Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features loc ...

, as are all alveolars, including the laterals. The post-velars are often written , , etc., but are not actually uvular.

Stress

Saanich stress is phonemic. Each full word has one stressed syllable, either in the root or in a suffix, the position of which is lexically determined. "

Secondary stress Secondary stress (or obsolete: secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees of Stress (linguistics), stress in the pronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being called ''primary''. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for ...

" is sometimes described, but this is merely a way of distinguishing lexical schwas (with "secondary stress", like all other vowels in a word) from

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epent ...

schwas ("unstressed").

Writing system

The Saanich orthography was created by Dave Elliott in 1978. It uses only

uppercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

letters, making it a

unicase A unicase or unicameral alphabet has just one case for its letters. Arabic, Brahmic scripts like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic), Hebrew, Iberian, Georgian, and Hangul are unicase writing systems, while (mod ...

alphabet, with one exception: the letter , which marks the third person possessive suffix.Saanich Language,"How to pronounce SENĆOŦE

Retrieved 2021-08-27. The glottal stop is not always indicated, but may be written with a comma: ,. Plain and glottalized resonants are not distinguished. The vowel is usually written Á, unless it occurs next to a post-velar consonant (), where it is written A.

Example text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Grammar

Metathesis

In Saanich, metathesis is used as a grammatical device to indicate "actual"

aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...

. 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).

References

Bibliography

*Bill, Adriane; Cayou, Roxanne; & Jim, Jacquelin. (2003). ''NEȾE NEḰȺ SḴELÁLṈEW̲'' '' ne Green Tree'. Victoria, B.C.: First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation & ȽÁU,WELṈEW̲ Tribal School. . * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * 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. *Montler, Timothy. (2018). ''SENĆOŦEN: A Dictionary of the Saanich Language''. Seattle: University of Washington Press. *Thompson, Laurence; Thompson, M. Terry; & Efrat, Barbara. (1974). Some Phonological Developments in Straits Salish. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''40'', 182–196. *YELḰÁTȾE laxton, Earl, Sr. & STOLȻEȽ lliot, John, Sr. (1994). ''Reef Net Technology of the Saltwater People''. Brentwood Bay, B.C.: Saanich Indian School Board.

External links

How to pronounce SENĆOŦEN
(1986) ( ttp://saanich.montler.net/ Timothy Montler's site
Phonology

*https://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/saanich-verbs/

(1991) (Timothy Montler's site)

(Chris Harvey's Native Language, Font & Keyboard)
SENĆOŦEN Welcome page
(First Voices) {{DEFAULTSORT:Saanich Language North Straits Salish languages Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast First Nations languages in Canada