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Nuxálk Language
Nuxalk (, ), also known as Bella Coola , is a Salishan language spoken by the Nuxalk people. Today, it is an endangered language in the vicinity of the Canadian town of Bella Coola, British Columbia. While the language is still sometimes called ''Bella Coola'' by linguists, the native name ''Nuxalk'' is preferred by some, notably by the Nuxalk Nation's government. Though the number of truly fluent speakers has not increased, the language is now taught in both the provincial school system and the Nuxalk Nation's own school, , which means "a place of learning". Nuxalk language classes, if taken to at least the Grade 11 level, are considered adequate second-language qualifications for entry to the major B.C. universities. CKNN-FM Nuxalk Radio is also working to promote the language. Name The name "Nuxalk" for the language comes from the native (or ), referring to the " Bella Coola Valley". "Bella Coola" is a rendering of the Heiltsuk , meaning "stranger". Geographical distr ...
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Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, second-largest country by total area, with the List of countries by length of coastline, world's longest coastline. Its Canada–United States border, border with the United States is the world's longest international land border. The country is characterized by a wide range of both Temperature in Canada, meteorologic and Geography of Canada, geological regions. With Population of Canada, a population of over 41million people, it has widely varying population densities, with the majority residing in List of the largest population centres in Canada, urban areas and large areas of the country being sparsely populated. Canada's capital is Ottawa and List of census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada, ...
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Heiltsuk Dialect
Heiltsuk , ''Híɫzaqv'', also known as Bella Bella and Haihais, is a dialect of the North Wakashan (Kwakiutlan) language Heiltsuk-Oowekyala that is spoken by the Haihai ( Xai'xais) and Bella Bella First Nations peoples of the Central Coast region of the Canadian province of British Columbia, around the communities of Bella Bella and Klemtu, British Columbia. Bella Bella is the headquarters of the Heiltsuk Nation government. There are only seven fluent speakers left of Heiltsuk. Heiltsuk is spoken in the villages of Bella Bella and Klemtu, both located on coastal islands in British Columbia not far from Bella Coola and Ocean Falls. It is one of the four Northern Wakashan languages, the others being Haisla (spoken in Kitimaat), Oowekyala (in Rivers Inlet), and Kwakwala (in Alert Bay, Port Hardy, and various settlements). Heiltsuk is considered to be a dialect of Heiltsuk-Oowekyala, which, like neighbouring Haisla and Kwak'wala, are part of the Northern Wakashan language gro ...
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Velar Consonant
Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsum are not very precise, velars easily undergo assimilation, shifting their articulation back or to the front depending on the quality of adjacent vowels. They often become automatically ''fronted'', that is partly or completely palatal before a following front vowel, and ''retracted'', that is partly or completely uvular before back vowels. Palatalised velars (like English in ''keen'' or ''cube'') are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have labialized velars, such as , in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial–velar consonants, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as . This distinction disappea ...
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Alveolar Consonant
Alveolar consonants (; UK also ) are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (the apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the "blade" of the tongue; called laminal consonants), as in French and Spanish. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) does not have separate symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar ''sh'', or retroflex. To disambiguate, the ''bridge'' (, ''etc.'') may be used for a dental consonant, or the under-bar (, ''etc.'') may be used for the postalveolars. differs from dental in that the former is a sibilant and the latter is not. differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized. The bare letter ...
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Labial Consonant
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in English. A third labial articulation is dentolabials, articulated with the upper lip against the lower teeth (the reverse of labiodental), normally only found in pathological speech. Generally precluded are linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue contacts the posterior side of the upper lip, making them coronals, though sometimes, they behave as labial consonants. The most common distribution between bilabials and labiodentals is the English one, in which the nasal and the stops, , , and , are bilabial and the fricatives, , and , are labiodental. The voiceless bilabial fricative, voiced bilabial fricative, and the bilabial approximant do not exist as the primary realizations of any sounds in E ...
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Americanist Phonetic Notation
Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists (many of whom were Neogrammarians) for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of indigenous languages of the Americas and for languages of Europe. It is still commonly used by linguists working on, among others, Slavic, Uralic, Semitic languages and for the languages of the Caucasus, of India, and of much of Africa; however, Uralicists commonly use a variant known as the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. Despite its name, NAPA has always been widely used outside the Americas. For example, a version of it is the standard for the transcription of Arabic in articles published in the , the journal of the German Oriental Society. Diacritics are more widely used in Americanist notation than in the Interna ...
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Tsimshian
The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terrace and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Prince Rupert, and Metlakatla, Alaska on Annette Island, the only reservation in Alaska. The Tsimshian estimate there are 45,000 Tsimshian people and approximately 10,000 members are federally registered in eight First Nations communities: Kitselas First Nation, Kitselas'','' Kitsumkalum First Nation, Kitsumkalum'','' Gitxaala Nation, Gitxaala'','' Gitga'at First Nation, Gitga'at, Kitasoo/Xaixais First Nation, Kitasoo, Lax-kw'alaams First Nation, Lax Kw'Alaams'','' and Metlakatla First Nation, Metlakatla. The latter two communities resulted in the colonial intersections of early settlers and consist of Tsimshian people belonging to the 'nine tribes.' The Tsimshian are one of the largest First Nations peop ...
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Athabaskan Languages
Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene languages, Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific Coast and Southern (or Apachean). Kari and Potter (2010:10) place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at . Chipewyan language, Chipewyan is spoken over the largest area of any North American native language, while Navajo language, Navajo is spoken by the largest number of people of any native language north of Mexico. The word ''Athabaskan'' is an Anglicisation, anglicized version of a Cree language name for Lake Athabasca ( '[where] there are reeds one after another') in Canada. Cree is one of the Algonquian languages and therefore not itself an Athabaskan language. The name was assigned by Albert Gallatin in his 1836 (written 1826) classification of the languages of North America. He acknowledged ...
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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 Northwest Coast, Wakashan languages have large consonant inventories—the consonants often occurring in complex clusters. Classification Family division The Wakashan language family consists of seven languages: * Wakashan ** Northern Wakashan (Kwakiutlan) languages *** Haisla (also known as Xaʼislak'ala, X̌àh̓isl̩ak̓ala or Haisla-Henaksiala, with two dialects, spoken by the Haisla) – about 200 speakers (2005) **** C̓imo'c̓a/Cʼimaucʼa (Kitimaat/Kitamat) - X̄a'islak̓ala dialect (spoken by the Haisla/x̣àʼisəla) **** Gitlo'p (Kitlope) - X̄enaksialak̓ala dialect (spoken by the Henaaksiala/X̄enaksiala) *** Kwak'wala (also known as Kwakiutl and Lekwala / Liq̓ʷala, with four dialects, spoken by and Kwakwaka'wakw or ...
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Grammatical Gender
In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called ''gender''. The values present in a given language, of which there are usually two or three, are called the ''genders'' of that language. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", whereas others use different definitions for each. Many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to Sex–gender distinction, sex or gender. According to one estimate, gender is used in approximately half of the world's languages. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words." Overview Languages with grammatical gender usually h ...
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Pharyngeal Consonant
A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis at the entrance of the larynx, as well as from epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants, with both movements being combined. Stops and trills can be reliably produced only at the epiglottis, and fricatives can be reliably produced only in the upper pharynx. When they are treated as distinct places of articulation, the term ''radical consonant'' may be used as a cover term, or the term '' guttural consonants'' may be used instead. Pharyngeal consonants can trigger effects on neighboring vowels. Instead of uvulars, which nearly always trigger retraction, pharyngeals tend to trigger lowering. For example, in Moroccan ...
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Interior Salish
The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first Interior Salish people encountered by American explorers were the Flathead people (''Selish'' or ''seliš''). Languages Languages with no living native speakers are marked with an obelisk, . * Salish ** Northern *** Shuswap, also known as Secwepemctsín and səxwəpməxcín. ***Lillooet, also known as St'át'imcets. *** Thompson River Salish, (; also known as Nlakaʼpamux, Ntlakapmuk, Thompson Salish, and Thompson.) ****Spuzzum dialect, also called Lower Thompson () **** **** ****Nicola dialect () ** Southern *** Coeur d’Alene, also known as Snchitsuʼumshtsn and snčícuʔumšcn. *** Columbia-Moses , also known as Columbia and Nxaʔamxcín. *** Colville-Okanagan, also known as Okanagan, Nxsəlxcin, Nsilxcín, Nsíylxcən, and ta nukunaqínxcən. *** Montana Salish, also kno ...
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