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 mo ...

and pronounced ) is the language of the First Nations

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 Na ...

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. Though ...

region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan 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 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 J ...

Language revitalization efforts

"The School Board, together with the FirstVoices 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 ...

sibilant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', an ...

s, , and are only rarely interdental. The alveolars , on the other hand, are apical, 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" is sometimes described, but this is merely a way of distinguishing lexical

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English ...

s (with "secondary stress", like all other vowels in a word) from epenthetic 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 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 The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...

: ,. 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. 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 NE, Ne or ne may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Neutral Evil, an alignment in the American role-playing game ''Dungeons & Dragons'' * New Edition, an American vocal group * Nicomachean Ethics, a collection of ten books by Greek philosopher Ar ...

'. Victoria, B.C.: First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation & ȽÁU,WELṈEW̲ Tribal School. . *

Mithun, Marianne Marianne Mithun (born 1946) is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is professor of linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position since 19 ...

. (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