Northern Straits Salish (also North Straits Salish) is a Coast Salish language of western Washington and British Columbia. It has several mutually intelligible dialects, which have often been treated as separate languages, both historically and today. Speakers recognize the similarities between the dialects but have no name for the language as a whole.
The dorsal nasal consonant /ŋ~ɴ/ is common in Northern Straits Salish but rare in other languages of the Pacific Northwest.
Dialects Northern Straits has the following dialects. Those marked with a dagger (†) have no native speakers. Lummi () Saanich (, ) Samish () (†) Semiahmoo (†) Lekwungen (; also known as Songhees or Songish) (†) T'Sou-ke (also known as Sooke)
Classification Northern Straits is a Salishan language of the Coast Salish branch. With Klallam, it forms the Straits Salish subgroup. The two languages are very closely related but are no longer mutually intelligible.
Early researchers disagreed on how to group the dialects of Northern Straits and Klallam into languages. In 1863, ethnologist George Gibbs treated Klallam, Sooke, and Songhees as one language and Lummi, Saanich, and Semiahmoo as another; he placed Samish in Lushootseed, a separate Coast Salish language. The missionary Myron Eells considered Lummi a dialect of Klallam, and German anthropologist Franz Boas counted Klallam and Northern Straits as a single language. Canadian anthropologist Charles Hill-Tout classified Sooke, Saanich, Songhees, Lummi, and Klallam as one language, "Lekonenen", and Songhees as a second, "Lekunen". Hill-Tout took these to be language names, but they derive from the Songhees words (the Songhees name for their own dialect) and (their name for the Songhees people).
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
An Outline of the Morphology and Phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish SENĆOŦEN Classified Word List