Pacific Northwest Languages
There are three core language families in the Pacific Northwest and the bordering states of Washington, Oregon, and the neighboring country of Canada, specifically in British Columbia. They are the Sprachbund/Salishan, Wakashan, and Chimakuan. Sprachbund/Salishan is known to have approximately 21 languages, Wakashan having 6 languages, and Chimakuan having 2 languages. Along the same region, other languages are present but do not fit these three categories. Tsimshian, Chinookan, and Sahaptian are these languages.[1] Just like the highlands of New Guinea, there are a lot of dialects found in the Pacific Northwest.
European Contact
Prior to the first European contact, natives in the area had a well-developed political and economic system. Population was dense for the non-agricultural regions in the area. The Wakashan area having about thirty-four thousand people, the Salish having about forty-eight thousand people, the Chinook at about twenty-two thousand people, and the Oregon Coast groups at about thirty thousand people.
When the first European settlers settled in the area in the early 1700s, they numbered forty-two thousand people. With the growth of the European population in the Pacific Northwest, the native population declined exponentially by approximately 80 percent due to encounters with Europeans. Many of the natives suffered through newfound and infectious diseases brought by the Europeans, such as smallpox, influenza, typhoid fever, and measles.[2]
Cultural Regions
Wakashan Area → Found along the south-central coast of British Columbia.
The Salish Area → Included tribes and bands of southwest British Columbia, Canada, the western area of Washington, and the Tillamook northern Oregon Coast
The Chinookan → Found in the Cascade Mountains and along the Columbia River, the Chinookan language was believed to originate in this area.
Penutian and Athabaskan → Along the Oregon Coast, the Athabaskan and Penutian languages are thought to originate in this area.
Tlingit, Haika, and Tsimshian → Often called the Northern Matrilineal tribes and are found in the coastal and southern region of the Tsimshian, western part of British Columbia.[3]
Dialects
Of the many different tribes and languages in the Pacific Northwest, much of the dialect side of things between these indigenous peoples was a factor of which cultural region they were a part of. The Salishan (Salish) language was most abundant in the Pacific Northwest, but not all Salish was spoken the same. Dialects differed between Coastal Salish and Interior Salish. Content words in this particular language have the ability to function as the head of the predicate.[4]
During the 19th century along the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Salish Sea was in fact one of the most, if not the most linguistically diverse cultural areas in North America at the time. It contained many distinct languages; the tribes that lived in this area spoke the languages of either Coastal Salish (Salishan) or Wakashan.
However, exactly how far inland, north, and south tribes were resulted in what kind of dialect the tribe used when speaking. For the native tribes living east of the Cascade Mountain Range in Oregon and Washington, as well as moving into parts of Idaho and Montana, their language was not Coastal Salishan, but simply Salishan with other sublanguages that differed from the Coastal Salishan sublanguages. Having this geographic barrier of the Cascade Mountain Range between these two neighboring Salishan sections made it difficult for tribes to understand one another.
The Chimakuan family was stationed in the northwest section of the state of Washington. In this native family there were two subsections to the language that these people spoke. The two subsections that were in this family’s language were Chemakum and Quileute. What separates the dialect in this tribe from other Native Pacific Northwest Tribes’ dialects is the fact that this tribe does not have any nasal consonants.[5]
Later, when traders and trappers were moving through the area, it was difficult to communicate with the various tribes in the various geographic areas throughout the Pacific Northwest. The traders and trappers found that they were unable to learn the various dialects of tribes, and since no tribes spoke a common language at the time, the language of Chinook Jargon (a combination of Wakashan, Salishan, Chinook, French, English, and a few other native languages) was developed. In Chinook Jargon there were modifications to pronunciation to allow those used to different sounds to be able to understand and communicate.[6]
Linguistics
The Salishan language family is made up of 23 different languages and has linguistic diversity. Although these languages are all part of the same family they are distinct in their own ways based on things like geography. Nuxalk is considered the language of the coast. Mithun (1999) states that geographically, this language is closer to the coastal languages, but linguistically it is not similar to those languages. The language has many words that have been adopted from other foreign languages. These words typically have little to no modification. The language’s loanwords make up roughly 30% of its lexicon. These words come from neighboring languages such as the Tsimshian, Athabaskan, and Wakashan languages.
Examining other languages part of the Salishan language family, it is clear that Halkomalen is made up of a dozen dialects, Klallam has a set of three dialects, and Northern Straits such as the Spokane-Kalispel-Flathead has six dialects.
Mosane family is a term used to describe the process of grouping languages. An example is the way the Salishan, the Wakashan, and the Chimakuan languages are grouped together. The similarities between these three languages is based on the fact that they share many words which come from the “ancestor language,” which is where all these languages come from. There have been connections made between the Salish and Kootenai language, which is geographically close to Flathead.
Salishan languages depend on the distance between communities and geography. The diversity between these languages has everything to do with the distance between communities. Closer communities typically mean that there is more interaction amongst speakers which results in similarity between linguistics. Geographical barriers can also influence the similarities and differences between languages. Regardless of communities being close together, certain geographical barriers such as mountains separating two communities can greatly influence the language.[7][8]
Geography
There are many different languages within the Pacific Northwest, but some of the more well-known and noticeable ones are of the Salishan, Wakashan and Chimakuan families. Specifically, the Salish language is found mainly on and around the Northwest Coast and the Columbia Plateau. Salish-speakers were the earliest settlers in the Fraser River area of British Columbia. The Salish language is thought to be one of the most traditional and heritage-filled languages on the Northwest Coast. Of the Salish languages, Pentlatch, Tillamook, Twana, and Nooksack are known to no longer be spoken today. Pentlatch, also within the series of Salishan languages, has been extinct for many generations. It is told that the last known native speaker of Pentlatch was alive during the 1930’s. Pentlatch was replaced by the neighboring Comox, Halkomelem, and Nootka, although most of the other Salish languages are either endangered or highly endangered.[9]
The Wakashan language is spoken mainly in and around the west coast of Canada. There are estimated to be a total number of about seven-hundred to eight-hundred speakers of Wakashan alive, according to the site “ethnologue.com” and “The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”. There are currently six Wakashan languages, and here is a list of them:
Haisla- 110 speakers according to UNESCO
Kwak’wala- 315 speakers according to UNESCO
Oowekyala- Heiltsuk- 105 speakers according to UNESCO
Makah- 12 speakers according to UNESCO
Nitinaht- 25 speakers according to the Canadian government
Nootka- 185 speakers according to UNESCO
All of these languages are endangered, considering that they are spoken only by a maximum of around three-hundred people. This makes it hard to follow the native speakers of the languages and carry on ancient traditions.[10]
The third of the three main families involving Pacific Northwest languages is the Chimakuan language. This language is spoken in the regions near the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State and the Northwest coast of the United States. The speakers of the Chimakuan languages are known to be members of the “First Nations,” which were native inhabitants of North America before Europeans established a presence in what is now the United States. Most of the speakers today live on the Quileute Reservation, located in Washington State, “primarily in the town of La Push.”
Of the two languages of the Chimakuan family, there is only one living language of the Chimakuan family, which is called Quileute. This language has a suspected ten speakers according to SIL International. The other language, Chemakum, is considered extinct.[11]
References
- ↑ Thomason, Sarah. "Linguistic areas and language history" (PDF). Conference on Language Contacts in Groningen: 1–14.
- ↑ "Pacific Northwest | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2019-11-21.
- ↑ "ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON THE CENTRAL AND NORTHERN COAST OF BRITISH COLUMBIA", Archaeological Investigations in the Hecate Strait, Milbanke South Area of British Columbia, Canadian Museum of History, 1973, pp. 11–14, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16pc2.8, ISBN 978-1-77282-012-6
- ↑ Monroe, Barbara (2014-07-03). Plateau Indian Ways with Words. University of Pittsburgh Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt7zwb3n. ISBN 978-0-8229-7956-2. Search this book on
- ↑ Montler, Timothy (April 2003). "Auxiliaries and other Categories in Straits Salishan". International Journal of American Linguistics. 69 (2): 103–134. doi:10.1086/379680. ISSN 0020-7071.
- ↑ "http://ljournal.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/a-2017-023.pdf". 2017. doi:10.18411/a-2017-023. External link in
|title=(help) - ↑ Bagemihl, Bruce (1998), "Maximality in Bella Coola (Nuxalk)", Salish Languages and Linguistics, DE GRUYTER MOUTON, doi:10.1515/9783110801255.71, ISBN 978-3-11-080125-5
- ↑ "Salishan Languages « Sorosoro". Retrieved 2019-11-21.
- ↑ Beck, David (September 2001). "The Salish Language Family: Reconstructing Syntax.:The Salish Language Family; Reconstructing Syntax". American Anthropologist. 103 (3): 849–850. doi:10.1525/aa.2001.103.3.849. ISSN 0002-7294.
- ↑ "North Wakashan Comparative Root List", North Wakashan comparative root list, Canadian Museum of History, 1980, pp. 47–411, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16xkn.7, ISBN 978-1-77282-230-4
- ↑ Adler, Fred W. (July 1961). "A Bibliographical Checklist of Chimakuan, Kutenai, Ritwan, Salishan, and Wakashan Linguistics". International Journal of American Linguistics. 27 (3): 198–210. doi:10.1086/464633. ISSN 0020-7071.
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