Samish dialect

Samish
Xws7ámeshqen
Pronunciation	[xʷsʔ'e.məʃ.qen]
Native to	United States, Canada
Ethnicity	Samish people
Revival
Language family	Salishan Coast Salish Central Coast Salish Straits Salish North Straits Salish Samish
Writing system	NAPA (Xws7ámeshqen Alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	sami1249

Samish (Xws7ámeshqen, IPA: [xʷsʔ'e.məʃ.qen]) is a dialect of the North Straits Salish dialect continuum spoken by the Indigenous Samish people of the Pacific Northwest. Samish is traditionally referred to as a language, but it is mutually intelligible with the other dialects of North Straits Salish. Samish is a Coast Salish language and is closely related to other languages in that family.

The Samish language is still spoken by some Samish tribal members, and the Samish Indian Nation's Xws7ámeshqen Program is working to revitalize the language in daily life. They offer classes to tribal citizens and have an online website with a wordlist and placenames.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar			Palatal	Velar		Post-velar		Glottal
				central	sibilant	lateral		plain	lab.	plain	lab.
Plosive/ Affricate	plain	p		t	(t͡s)		t͡ʃ	(k)	kʷ	k̠	k̠ʷ	ʔ
	ejective	pʼ	t͡θʼ	tʼ	(t͡sʼ)	t͡ɬʼ	t͡ʃʼ		kʷʼ	k̠ʼ	k̠ʷʼ
Fricative					s	ɬ	ʃ		xʷ	x̠	x̠ʷ	h
Sonorant	plain	m		n		l	j		w	ŋ̠
	glottalized	ˀm		ˀn		ˀl	ˀj		ˀw	ˀŋ̠

• /t͡s/ is a rare sound, only occurring in the deictic morpheme ⟨cə⟩.
• /t͡θʼ/ may commonly be heard as [t͡sʼ] in free variation among speakers.
• /k/ is only found in loanwords.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə
Open		a

Orthography

Xws7ámeshqen Alphabet

Uppercase	Lowercase	IPA
7		/ʔ/
A	a	/e/
Ch	ch	/t͡ʃ/
Ch'	ch'	/t͡ʃ‘/
E	e	/e~ə/
H	h	/h/
I	i	/i/
K	k	/k~k’/
Kw	kw	/kʷ/
Kw'	kw'	/kʷ’/
L	l	/l/
Lh	lh	/ɬ/
M	m	/m/
N	n	/n/
Ng	ng	/ŋ/
O	o	/ɔ/
P	p	/p/
P'	p'	/p’/
Q	q	/q/
Q'	q'	/q’/
Qw	qw	/qʷ/
Qw'	qw'	/qʷʼ/
S	s	/s/
Sh	sh	/ʃ/
T	t	/t/
T'	t'	/t’/
Tl'	tl'	/t͡ɬ’/
Ts	ts	/ts/
Ts'	ts'	/ts’/
U	u	/u/
W	w	/w/
X̲	x̲	/χ/
Xw	xw	/xʷ/
X̲w	x̲w	/χʷ/
Y	y	/j/

External links

• Samish Language Program