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Saanich (also , written as SENĆOŦEN in Saanich orthography) is the language of the Saanich peoples. Saanich is a member of a dialect continuum called Northern Straits which is a Coast Salishan language. The Northern Straits varieties are closely related to the Klallam language.
Sounds
Vowels
Consonants
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Lateral | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Rounded | Plain | Rounded | |||||||||
| Stop | Plain | |||||||||||
| Glottalized | ||||||||||||
| Affricate | Plain | |||||||||||
| Glottalized | ||||||||||||
| Fricative | ||||||||||||
| Nasal | Plain | |||||||||||
| Glottalized | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | Plain | |||||||||||
| Glottalized | ||||||||||||
are also written , although they are grooved, not interdental. The uvular nasals are also written , but they are not velar.
The status of the glottalized resonants is not agreed upon. Some linguists analyse them as unit phonemes, others as sequences of a plain resonant and a glottal stop .
Writing system
The Saanich orthography was created by Dave Elliot in 1978. It uses only uppercase letters, with one exception: the letter s, which marks the third person possessive suffix.
| A | Á | B | C | Ć | D | E | H | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | Í | J | K | * | L | M | |||
| N | O | P | Q | S | Ś | T | |||
| Ŧ | U | W | X | Y | Z | s | |||
| ? | |||||||||
The glottal stop is not always indiciated, 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 an uvular consonant (), where is is written A.
Grammar
Metathesis
In Saanich, metathesis is used as a grammatical devise 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).
| T̵X̱ÉT 'shove' (nonactual) | → | T̵ÉX̱T 'shoving' (actual) |
| ṮPÉX̱ 'scatter' (nonactual) | → | ṮÉPX̱ 'scattering' (actual) |
| T̸L̵ÉQ 'pinch' (nonactual) | → | T̸ÉL̵Q 'pinching' (actual) |
External links
- An Outline of the Morphology and Phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish (1986) (Timothy Montler's site)
- Saanich Classified Word List (1991) (Timothy Montler's site)
- SENĆOŦEN (Saanich, Northern Straits Salish) (Chris Harvey's Native Language, Font & Keyboard)
- Saanich Indian School Board
- SENĆOŦEN Welcome page (First Voices)
Bibliography
- Bill, Adriane; Cayou, Roxanne; & Jim, Jacquelin. (2003). NET
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- 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.
- Thompson, Laurence; Thompson, M. Terry; & Efrat, Barbara. (1974). Some phonological developments in Straits Salish. International Journal of American Linguistics, 40, 182-196.
- YELḰÁTT̵E Earl, Sr.; & STOLC̸EL̵ John, Sr.. (1994). Reef Net Technology of the Saltwater People. Brentwood Bay, B.C.: Saanich Indian School Board.
"Saanich (linguistics)"