Native to Canada, United States | Native speakers ca. 5 (2014) | |
Region British Columbia, Washington Language family Salishan
Coast
Central
Straits
North Straits
Saanich Writing system SENĆOŦEN
Sometimes NAPA Official language in BOḰEĆEN
SȾÁ,UTW̱
W̱JOȽEȽP
W̱SÍKEM | ||
Saanich (also Sənčaθən, written as SENĆOŦEN in Saanich orthography) is the language of the First Nations Saanich people. Saanich is a member of a dialect continuum called Northern Straits which is a Coast Salishan language. North Straits varieties are closely related to the Klallam language.
Contents
Language revitalization efforts
"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.
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.
Vowels
Saanich has no rounded vowels in native vocabulary. As in many languages, vowels are strongly affected by post-velar consonants.
The rounded close high back vowel /u/ is found only in loanwords, such as CEPU (/kəˈpu/) "coat", from French.
/i/ is [ɪ] adjacent to a post-velar or labio-postvelar consonant, or preceding /ʔ/.
/e/ is [e̽]—rarely as low as [ɛ]—adjacent to a post-velar or labio-postvelar consonant or preceding /ʔ/. It is closer—almost [i]—next to a lateral, post-alveolar, or /w/.
/ɑ/ is [ɐ] before /j/. It is also affected by post-velars and /ʔ/.
/ə/ is generally mid central, but becomes [ɑ̽] adjacent to a postvelar or labio-postvelar, or a laryngeal obstruent, and especially between two such consonants, whether or not it is stressed. When unstressed, it is a close central [ɨ] following post-alveolars and before sonorants (including /ŋ/), and it is central rounded [ʉ] before the labialized obstruents.
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 unrounded prevelar stop /k̟/ is found only in loanwords, as in CEPU (/k̟əˈpu/) above.
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.
The phonemic status of the glottalized sonorants /mˀ nˀ ŋ̠ˀ lˀ jˀ wˀ/ is not agreed upon. Some linguists analyse them as unit phonemes, others as sequences of a plain sonorant and a glottal stop /ʔ/. They do not occur in word-initial position. They tend to [ʔC] following a stressed vowel, [Cʔ] preceding a stressed vowel, and creaky voiced sonorants elsewhere.
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 schwas (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 letters; making it a unicase alphabet, with one exception: the letter s, which marks the third person possessive suffix.
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.
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).