Saanich (also Sənčáθən, written as SENĆOŦEN in Saanich orthography and pronounced [sənˈt͡ʃɑs̪ən]) is the language of the First Nations Saanich people in the Pacific Northwest region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan language in the Northern Straits dialect continuum, the varieties of which are closely related to the Klallam language.
Saanich | |
---|---|
SENĆOŦEN Sənčáθən | |
Native to | Canada, United States |
Region | British Columbia, Washington |
Native speakers | ca. 5 (2014)[1] |
Language family | Salishan
|
Writing system | SENĆOŦEN Sometimes NAPA |
Official status | |
Official language in | Pauquachin Tsawout Tsartlip Tseycum |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | saan1246 |
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. |
"The W̱SÁNEĆ School Board, together with the FirstVoices program for revitalizing Aboriginal languages, is working to teach a new generation to speak SENĆOŦEN" at the ȽÁU, WELṈEW̱ Tribal School.[2][3]
A Saanich texting app was released in 2012.[4] A SENĆOŦEN iPhone app was released in October 2011.[5] An online dictionary, phrasebook, and language learning portal is available at the First Voices SENĆOŦEN Community Portal.[6]
Saanich has no rounded vowels in native vocabulary. As in many languages, vowels are strongly affected by post-velar consonants.
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
High | i[lower-alpha 1] | u[lower-alpha 2] | |
Mid | e[lower-alpha 3] | ə[lower-alpha 4] | |
Low | ɑ[lower-alpha 5] |
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.
Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Pre-velar | Post-velar | Glottal | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | sibilant | lateral | plain | rounded | plain | rounded | ||||||
Stop | plain | p | t | ts | tʃ | k̟[lower-alpha 1] | k̟ʷ | k̠ | k̠ʷ | ʔ | ||
glottalized | pʼ | t̪s̪ʼ | tʼ | tsʼ | tɬʼ | tʃʼ | k̟ʷʼ | k̠ʼ | k̠ʷʼ | |||
Fricative | s̪ | s | ɬ | ʃ | x̟ʷ | x̠ | x̠ʷ | h | ||||
Sonorant | plain | m | n | l | j | w | ŋ̠ | |||||
glottalized | mˀ[lower-alpha 2] | nˀ[lower-alpha 2] | lˀ[lower-alpha 2] | jˀ[lower-alpha 2] | wˀ[lower-alpha 2] | ŋ̠ˀ[lower-alpha 2] |
The dentals are often written ⟨θ⟩, ⟨tθʼ⟩, but this is inaccurate, as they are laminal sibilants, [s̻, ts̻], and are only rarely interdental. The alveolars /s, ts, tsʼ/, on the other hand, are apical, as are all alveolars, including the laterals. The post-velars are often written ⟨q⟩, ⟨χ⟩, etc., but are not actually uvular.
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 schwas (with "secondary stress", like all other vowels in a word) from epenthetic schwas ("unstressed").
Saanich alphabet SENĆOŦEN Sənčáθən | |
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Script type | Alphabet
|
Time period | 1978 to present |
Languages | North Straits Salish language Saanich language |
Related scripts | |
Parent systems | (Proto-writing)
|
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Latn (215), Latin |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Latin |
Unicode range | U+0000 to U+007E Basic Latin and punctuation |
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. |
The Saanich orthography was created by Dave Elliott in 1978.[7] It uses only uppercase letters, making it a unicase alphabet, with one exception: the letter s, which marks the third person possessive suffix.[8]
A | Á | Ⱥ | B | C | Ć | Ȼ | D | E | H |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
/e/ | /ej/ | /pʼ/ | /k̟/ | /t͡ʃ/ | /k̟ʷ/ | /tʼ/ | /ə/ | /h/ | |
I | Í | J | K | ₭ | Ḵ | Ḱ | L | Ƚ | M |
/i/ | /əj/, /ɑj/ | /t͡ʃʼ/ | /k̠ʼ/ | /k̠ʷʼ/ | /k̠/ | /k̠ʷ/ | /l/, /lˀ/ | /ɬ/ | /m/, /mˀ/ |
N | Ṉ | O | P | Q | S | Ś | T | Ⱦ | Ṯ |
/n/, /nˀ/ | /ŋ̠/, /ŋ̠ˀ/ | /ɑ/ | /p/ | /k̟ʷʼ/ | /s/ | /ʃ/ | /t/ | /t͡s̪ʼ/ | /tɬʼ/ |
Ŧ | U | W | W̱ | X | X̱ | Y | Z | s | |
/s̪/ | /əw/, /u/ | /w/ | /x̟ʷ/ | /x̠/ | /x̠ʷ/ | /j/, /jˀ/ | /d͡z/ | /-s/ |
The glottal stop /ʔ/ is not always indicated, but may be written with a comma: ,.
Plain and glottalized resonants are not distinguished.
The vowel /e/ is usually written Á, unless it occurs next to a post-velar consonant (/k̠ k̠ʷ k̠ʼ k̠ʷʼ x̠ x̠ʷ ŋ̠ ŋ̠ʷ/), where it is written A.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
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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).
ŦX̲ÉT 'shove' (nonactual) | → | ŦÉX̲T 'shoving' (actual) |
ṮPÉX̲ 'scatter' (nonactual) | → | ṮÉPX̲ 'scattering' (actual) |
ȾȽÉQ 'pinch' (nonactual) | → | ȾÉȽQ 'pinching' (actual) |
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