#wakashan languages

[skiddo-xy]

🇨🇦 Langblr Challenge Day 13: How Many Languages Are Spoken In Your Country? 🇨🇦

In this post: official languages, Indigenous languages, more recent immigrant languages. Touches on language and dialect diversity as well as preservation/revitalization. Statistic bomb so you don't get bored: there are over 200 languages spoken in Canada.

Been waiting a while for a day when I have lots of time so I can medium dive into my country of Canada 🇨🇦

Part I: Official Languages

So officially, we have two official languages: English and French, both directly tied to our country's colonial history. Here is a map of Canada, where 1 represents the area/s where English is predominant, 2 represents the area/s where English and French are roughly equally predominant (bilingual belt) while 3 represents the area where French is predominant. And everywhere else is where the population density is less than 0.4/km, yes we are that sparse

We also have multple varieties of French in Canada, the most known Quebecois French, Acadian French, Chiac etc.

In my experience, French Immersion programs, public school programs in which Anglophone children only are spoken to in French and they learn it naturally--not to say these kids speak it natively, they still learn advanced grammar etc all throughout school--are common in major urban centres from in or close to the bilingual belt in Canada. I myself am in one of these programs (you can drop it after first year of high school, but if you do it all throughout highschool you can get an additional French-language diploma) and though I recognize its problems (especially as someone who has lived in Francophone places as well) I am very grateful for the opportunities it has provided me with.

Bilingualism, especially in Quebec, is a debated political subject in Canada. Here are some recent news articles:

Quebec language watchdog orders café to make Instagram posts in French

23 bilingual Quebec municipalities challenge province's new language law in court

Quebec's tuition hike triggers financial strain for English universities as enrolment drops

Part II: Indigenous Languages

Canada is home to over 70 Indigenous languages from about 12 Indigenous language families: Algonquian, Inuit, Athabaskan, Siouan, Salish, Tsimshian, Wakashan, Iroquoian, Michif, Tlingit, Kutenai & Haida.

Unfortunately, due to Canada's long history of colinization, all of these languages are now endangered. This is mostly attributed to Canada's past residential school system, in which Indigenous children were taken from their homes to attend English or French-language boarding schools and critical to the language situation, abused for speaking their ancestral tongue. More on residential schools.

Not all is lost though! In 2019, the Indigenous Languages Act was enacted which pledged government funding towards the reviatalization and sustainment of Indigenous languages as part of the 94 Calls to Action established by Canada's Truth and Reconciliation commission written to establish reconciliation for Indigenous Canadians and Canada.

Currently, 9 Indigenous languages are recognized as official in the Northwest Territories federal subdivision (Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, Inuvialuktun, Gwich'in, North Slavey, South Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ, Chipewyan, Cree) alongside English and French, while in the territory of Nunavut, Inuktut (both Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun dialects) are recognized as official alongside English and French.

Recent news: Inuktut became first Indigenous language of Canada to be available on Google Translate as of 2 weeks ago! Try it out using Latin Inuktut or Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Inuktut! Please note that Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics are not actually Indigneous to Canada, they were developed by missionaries to facilitate the spread of Christianity among Indigenous Canadians. Indigneous languages of Canada were traditionally unwritten.

Also: searchable glossary of Indigenous place names in Canada, interactive map

Part III: (More Recent) Immigrant Languages

This section basically encompasses everything else in Canada. Some highlights:

Mandarin is spoken by 679,255 people as of the 2021 census (1.9% of the population

Canadian Ukrainian, a dialect from 1920's western Ukraine with adapted English words for new things such as кеш реґистер/kesh regyster (cash register) (fun fact: Canada is home to the 2nd largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world!)

Canadian Gaelic, pretty similar to Canadian Ukrainian's history but with Scottish Gaelic, most prevalent in rural communities of Canada's Nova Scotia (lit. "New Scotland") province

Plautdietsch, the Mennonite dialect/s of the Low German dialect of German, with Frisian and Flemish aspects, most Canadian speakers are Mennonites who immigrated to Canada from Russian Empire-era South Ukraine (P.S this is totally not self promo or anything but I have a bunch of posts about Plautdietsch on my blog as someone whose great-grandparents were native Plautdietsch speakers under the tag #plautdietsch)

And there's so much more to learn, not just for languages exclusive to/most common in Canada! You can look at the link I just linked or go here for raw data from the 2021 census and then "find in page" your way to the "language"s section

End

This is a subject I think is super neat so I'm glad I got an outlet to write about that. There's so much more I could've talked about, so for futher reading you can check out this Wikipedia article. If you made it this far, THANK YOU

[phonaesthemes]

Nuu-chah-nulth master carver Tim Paul has started work on a totem pole that intends to raise awareness of threatened Indigenous languages.

The pole is being carved out of an 800-year-old, 23 metre-high red cedar tree that likely came down during a windstorm 50 years ago near Bamfield, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

The totem pole is being created in honour of the United Nations Year of Indigenous Languages. Paul is carving the piece at a time when his language, Nuu-chah-nulth, is at great risk of becoming extinct.

"We really need to not only deal with the language and save what we have left, but we also need to upkeep and re-educate ourselves of the cultural teachings within our families," Paul told All Points West guest host Megan Thomas. Paul is of the Hesquiaht tribe of the Nuu-chah-nulth,and says this project is special to him because his grandmother was very concerned about their traditional language.

"She revered the language, she spoke the language and she wanted to hold it and pass it on down to my aunts and uncles," he said. 

[linguisticdiscovery]

Today's word of the day is from the Nuuchahnulth language, a member of the Wakashan language family, spoken along the coast of British Columbia, Canada. To ring in the new year, I chose the word kʷiisqšiʔaƛ 'it became another year'.

This is a great example of what words in Nuuchahnulth are like because it's a verb meaning 'to be a different year'. The root is kʷis- 'to be different', and it has a suffix -q 'year'. After that it also has a momentaneous suffix, which you add to verbs to conceptualize the event as happening at a single point in time, as well as a telic suffix, meaning that you conceptualize the event as having been completed. This type of word is extremely common in Nuuchahnulth. Almost anything in Nuuchahnulth can be a verb, and it has a whole slew of lexical suffixes that in other languages would be separate words, such as 'year', or 'house' or 'beach'. So this is a beautiful example of how the Nuuchahnulth language works.

[vocalfriespod]

Now with transcript!

[gwendolynlerman]

Languages of the world

Nuu-chah-nulth (nuučaan̓uɫ)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 130

Spoken in: Canada

Script: Latin, 47 letters

Grammatical cases: 0

Linguistic typology: polysynthetic, VSO

Language family: Wakashan, Southern

Number of dialects: 12

History

1815 - first printed Nuu-chah-nulth words

1939 - first texts in the language

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the script: a b c c̕ č č̕ d e h ḥ i k k̕ kʷ k̕ʷ l l̕ ł ƛ ƛ̕ m m̕ n n̕ ŋ o p p̕ q q̕ qʷ q̕ʷ s š t t̕ u w w̕ x xʷ x̣ x̣ʷ y y̕ ʕ ʔ.

Long vowels are doubled. There is also a third class of vowels, which are long within the first two syllables of a word and short elsewhere.

Grammar

Nouns have two numbers (singular and plural). Marking the latter is optional in all cases, except in kinship terms.

Possession is marked by possessive pronouns, clitics, and suffixes. There are no articles or adpositions.

Verbs are conjugated for tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number. Nuu-chah-nulth distinguishes general and near future, similar to English “will” and “going to”.

Dialects

There are 12 dialects: Ahousaht, Clayoquot, Ehattesaht, Hesquiat, Kyuquot, Mowachaht, Nuchatlaht, Ohiaht, Toquaht, Tseshaht, Uchuklesaht, and Ucluelet. However, some sources distinguish between 14 and 20 varieties.

They differ in phonology, morphology, and vocabulary.

[pararennial-archived]

Hey all, I’ve been wanting to compile a resource post regarding the current situation at home. When I say home, I mean the province British Columbia, on unceded, ancestral, and traditional territories of First Nation peoples of the following language groups: Wakashan, Salishan, Ktunaxa, Tsimshianic, Haida, Dene, and Algonquin. 

BC is flooded, with sudden and heavy rainstorms in the last week and at present has flooded many communities near the southern interior of the province. Highways are destroyed by mudslides, roads, farmlands, and homes are flooded, rivers are rising above the banks, and evacuation orders have been made for towns that have yet to evacuate. Here are some organizations you can donate to if you can, but if not please spread this around!

Abbotsford Disaster Relief Fund

BC Search and Rescue Association

United Way for British Columbia

Food Banks BC

BC Agriculture Council

BC SPCA

Disaster Aid Canada

Mamas for Mamas

First Nations Emergency Services Society

[salvadorbonaparte]

Nuu-chah-nulth Resources

Wikipedia

Omniglot

Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council

First Voices

The Sound of the Nuu-chah-nulth language

Youtube Lessons

Cooking Show

MEGA drive

Nuu-chah-nulth (also known as Nootka) is a Wakashan language spoken in what is now Canada (British Columbia). It uses the Latin Alphabet but with a fair number of symbols not used in English. 

[liskantope]

Journey Through Languages project: languages of North America

Whew -- I don’t think I’ve ever squeezed so many distinct language families onto only one list (well, I didn’t actually bother putting listing any of the Wintuan and Chumashan languages since they’re pretty much all extinct and easily available information is sparse), plus some language isolates on the side, but here are what look to me like all of the remaining languages native to North America. (Some language families such as Uzo-Aztecan, which clearly have some languages spoken in southwest US will be included on the Central American Languages list.) As usual it became a bit hard to pick and choose, especially given how many of the languages shown on Wikipedia are extinct yet have detailed pages, and also given my biases as someone who grew up in America and is curious about the languages that used to be spoken in various familiar places.

      Haida

Na-Dene languages

      Tlingit*

   Athabaskan languages

      Dena’ina       Tanacross       Tutchone       Gwich’in       Kaska       Slavey       Dogrib       Chipewyan       Babine-Witsuwit’en       Carrier

   Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages

      Hupa

   Southern Athabaskan languages

      Mescalero-Chiricahua       Navajo*       (Western) Apache

Wakashan languages

      Haisla       Kwak’wala

Salishan languages

      Nuxalk (Bella Coola)       Comox       Halkomelem       Shuswap       Lillooet       Thompson       Okanagan

      Kutenai

Penutian languages

      Sahaptin

Wintuan languages

Chumashan languages

Algic languages (Proto-Algic)

   Algonquian languages (Proto-Algonquian)

      Plains Algonquian languages          Blackfoot*          Arapaho          Cheyenne       Central Algonquian languages          Cree*          Menominee          Ojibwe*          Potawatomi          Fox*          Shawnee          Miami-Illinois       Eastern Algonquian languages          Mi’kmaq          Abenaki          Maliseet-Passamaquoddy          Massachusett          Delaware*

Siouan languages

      Crow*       Hidatsa       Sioux       Lakota (Sioux)       Dakota (Sioux*)       Assiniboine       Stony       Winnebago       Osage*

Iroquoian languages (Proto-Iroquoian)

      Onondaga       Cayuga       Seneca*       Oneida       Mohawk*       Tuscarora       Cherokee*

Caddoan languages

      Caddo

      Wichita

Tanoan languages

      Jemez       Taos       (Southern) Tiwa       Tewa

      Yuci

Muskogean languages

      Chickasaw*       Choctaw*       Muscogee (Creek*)       Mikasuki (Seminole)       Alabama       Koasati

      Tunica

      Keres

Hokan languages

   Yuman–Cochimí languages       Quechan       Maricopa       Mojave

      Seri

      Tol

      Zuni

[ayearinlanguage]

A Year in Language, Day 223: Nuu-chah-nulth Nuu-chah-nulth, and the people of the same name, are more commonly known to the outside world as "Nootka" though that terminology is not self-designated. It is a native language of the Pacific Northwest and is still spoken by a hundred or so people on Vancouver Island. Nuu-chah-nulth is the source of the English word "potlatch", the gifting and feasting tradition common to all native people of the region. It is also one of the primary source of words for the pidgin language known as Chinook Jargon, which was once used for trade from Alaska to Oregon. Nuu-chah-nulth is a member of a language family known as Wakashan, but is a part of the Pacific Northwestern language area and as such has many features typical of those language, even ones unrelated to it. The features include ejective consonants, lateral fricatives, and uvular consonants.

[americanling]

Giant consonant inventories in western North America

The Americas are one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world, particularly Western North America, where rugged geography allowed dozens of individual language families, each with 5, 10, or 15 languages to each, spring up in incredibly close proximity. These languages, besides the occasional word, share little with one another, except for one thing: large consonant inventories.

When being described, languages are ascribed a consonant inventory, a list of consonants used by the language speakers. The size range of consonant inventories varies drastically, from the six of Papua New Guinea’s Rotokas, to the 122 of Botswana’s !Xóõ, but the average tends to hover between 18 and 25. the Romance languages, especially Spanish and Italian, are especially good examples of standard inventory sizes, having roughly 19 and 22, respectively.

With this in mind, the languages west of the Rockies are distinct in their dramatically above-average consonant numbers. As categorized by the World Atlas of Language Structures, north of the San Francisco Bay, only four languages are anything less than moderately large, and north of the California-Oregon border, none are. The WALS map is kind of bare north of Coast Tsimshian, but Deg Xinag, Upper Tanana, Hän, and Gwich’in all are well above what WALS classifies as “large,” and those are only languages in central Alaska/Yukon.

Even more interesting than this, as WALS says, is that “the languages in this latter area belong to a number of different language families with no demonstrable genealogical relationship, including Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, Salishan, Tsimshianic and Wakashan, among others. There is no evidence that the predominance of large consonant inventories in this area is a consequence of direct borrowing of words between these languages.” This contrasts with Southern Africa, another area known for its large consonant inventories; however, many of the languages there, including Zulu and Xhosa, borrowed many of their consonants from other languages. based on all heretofore-found evidence, no consonants were borrowed in the Northwest.

So how did these massive inventories manifest? Let’s look at Hän, with its whopping 50 consonants, to see. One of the more notable things is how full its consonant inventory is. Most inventories are shown as tables with where the consonant is made in the mouth on top, and how it’s made on the side, and most of these tables tend to be notably empty, with only a few of the possible combinations filled. English is a good example of this. This isn’t so with Hän, though, nor with most of these languages, where there aren’t many open spots; the only notable one is the stops between the alveolar and velar positions, whose sounds are rare globally and unheard of in North America. Elsewhere, the table is filled to the brim. Also notable is how Hän modifies its consonants. Most languages have only two ways to modify a base consonant, either a voiced-unvoiced pair or an plain-aspirated pair, but in parts of the table there’s up to four ways: plain, aspirated, ejectivized, and prenasalized. Given the filled nature of the inventory, these two combined allow for dramatically higher numbers of consonants than in most languages.

[reclamationdays]

Haíɫzaqvḷa, The Language of the Heiltsuk

The language of the Heiltsuk has been described as living, an expression of knowledge and insight. To me a language has always been an important filter through which a person's ideas or memes are filtered through. A language can define how people think, feel and act. A language is closely tied to a nations culture and you may even say it is the life blood of a nation. I have never believed in that "stick and stones" phrase. I have chosen to believe in that words can kill. I believe that the words we speak can have a profound impact on the world around us. It is the passing of ideas and philosophies, memes.

It is said that the Heiltsuk language is a northern Wakashan language. It has several dialects, five belonging to the five tribes that form the First Nation. The language and it's dialects is said to be defined by intonation, that even slight intonation changes can change the meaning of whole words. Although there are few fluent speakers the number of second language speakers has been rising with the more nuanced and increased understanding throughout the years, instruction has improved, that it was my relative that lives on reserve has told me. I know that the Heiltsuk language is not the only First Nation language that is being revived, there are other nations doing the same. I'm sure that the First Nation languages in Canada will rebound. It has become clear to me time and again how much the First Nations of Canada value their original languages.

I have heard from multiple people I've met and discussed in the New Westminster DC ISS Resources Room that Indigenous languages are being taught across reserves and other places like classes and online classes. The Indigenous peoples of Canada have far from given up on their original languages and are fighting to recover their language, culture and the memes (or ideas) that come with these things. They have time and again expressed desire and shown the actions they are taking to preserve the past. It is heartwarming to hear this resolve. It makes me want to learn about the Heiltsuk language and better speak my father's language Spanish (which I understand more than speak).

Information retrieved from

http://www.heiltsuknation.ca/about-2/language/

https://languagegeek.com/lgwp/languages/wakashan-languages/hai%C9%ABzaqvl%CC%A3a-heiltsuk-language/

[thebigkelu]

Nootka Indian standing on shore with spear. - Curtis - 1910

The Nootka (nut'-kah), also known as the Nuu-chah-nulth, were North American Indians who lived along the seaward coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state.  Along with the Kwakiutl, these two tribes formed the Wakashan language family.

[its-me-canada-blog]

WHICH LANGUAGES ARE USED IN CANADA?

Canada is a bilingual country,with both French and English recognized as the nation's national languages.

Sources:  https://www.ethnologue.com/profile/CA

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY ARE USING THESE LANGUAGES?

Canada has two official languages (see English Language and French Language), but the country's linguistic wealth is much greater. Beginning with the oldest languages, there are no fewer than 50 Indigenous languages, some of which seem to be disappearing. 

According to the 1996 census, there were around 800 000 Indigenous peoples in Canada, but only about 207 000, or one-quarter, claimed one of their traditional languages as their mother tongue. 

There are around 70 distinct Indigenous languages in Canada, falling into 10 separate language families:

Algonquian

Dene

Eskimo-Aleut/Eskaleut

Iroquoian

Ktunaxa/Kutenai/Kootenai (isolate)

Other language families: Xaad Kil/Xaaydaa Kil/Haida (isolated), Salishan, Siouan, Tsimshianic and Wakashan.

Sources: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/languages-in-use https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/article/aboriginal-people-languages

[wardoftheedgeloaves]

I’d say ejectives are stable when paired with at least allophonic aspirates (thus in the Caucasus and NA), but not necessarily so when paired with plain tenues. And also … what’s the arrangement in Quechua dialects again? Some have /P Pʰ Pʼ/ and others just plain /P/, but does any variety merge the phonations two-way?

(from earlier discussion with @possessivesuffix)

Several Quechua dialects have no phonation distinction in the stops at all (because it’s thought to be secondary in the dialects that do have it).

Salishan languages generally have a /P P’/ system and as far as I know this is always stable. Of course Salishan also belongs to the Northwest Coast Sprachbund and is surrounded by languages that have a /P Pʰ P’/ system--Athabaskan, Wakashan, Haida.

Wakashan is interesting because the family shows several different stop systems. Nuu-chah-nulth (aka Nootka) has /P P’/, like Salishan, as did Makah until recently (it has /b d/, but those are from earlier *m *n). Heiltsuk and Haisla have /P Pʰ P’/. Kwak’wala has /P B P’/. Somebody published a comparative dictionary of Wakashan a few years ago, but it was via Lincom EUROPA and seems quite obscure (not on Libgen).

[circusheart]

language family names are even MORE arbitrary

guajajaran instead of tupian, from guajajara (individual lang) instead of tupi

qilakan instead of eskimo-aleut, from qilak “sky”, shared by most inuit langs

trans-panaman instead of chibchan

alaska-apache instead of na-dene

emphasian for afroasiatic, from emphatic consonants

east vancouver and west vancouver for salishan and wakashan, respectively

arrarrbian instead of iwaidjan, from arrarrbi “people”

incan instead of quechuan

aignian instead of iroquoian, from the old french term “aigniers” for the mohawk people

guyanan instead of cariban

[linguistlist-blog]

Diss: The Semantics of Kʷak̓ʷala Object Case

In this dissertation, I investigate factors underlying the distribution of object case in Kʷak̓ʷala, an endangered Northern Wakashan language of British Columbia, Canada. Kʷak̓ʷala has two types of objects, instrumental (=s) and accusative (=x̌). To account for their distribution, I develop a semantic theory of object case that is grounded in event structure. The first central claim of this theory is that instrumental case marks internal arguments which participate in initiating subevents (Co http://dlvr.it/QD9YdQ