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SENĆOŦEN

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Pictures of the SENĆOŦEN language in use

The North Straits Salish langauge is the label given by linguists to a group of dialects which (depending on the linguist) is located along the southern reaches of the Strait of Georgia, the Juan de Fuca Strait, and the northern part of Puget Sound. This designation may include any or all of the following languages: SENĆOŦEN (Saanich), Semiahmoo, Sooke, Songish, Lummi, and/or Clallam. This page focusses on the SENĆOŦEN language solely.

The current orthography was invented by Dave Elliott. It is a very interesting writing system in that it uses only capital letters, except for the lowercase ‹s›. It is a very accurate, impressive, and efficient alphabet, all the more so because Mr. Elliott had no university linguistics training. The Saanich School site has more information on his story.

Recently, myself along with STOLȻEȽ (John Elliott) of the L̵ÁU,WELṈEW̱ school and FirstVoices made a proposal to Unicode to have four letters (Ⱥ, Ȼ, Ƚ, Ⱦ) from the SENĆOŦEN orthography included in the Unicode standard. These letters are now part of the Unicode Standard 4.1.

Note: There are several Roman Orthography conventions on this site that may require further explanation.  On the charts below, there is lots of phonetic terminology that may not be familiar to everyone.

The Canadian Census does not individually count SENĆOŦEN speakers. According to Howe and Cook, there are 20 speakers.

SENĆOŦEN Community Names:

BOḰEĆEN – Pauquachin
MÁLEXEȽ – Malahat
*SEMYOME – Semiahmoo
*SXIMEȽEȽ – Esquimalt
**T’sou-ke – Sooke
ȾÁ,UTW̱ – Tsawout
*W̱ĆIÁNEW̱ – Becher Bay
W̱JOȽEȽP – Tsartlip
W̱SÍKEM – Tseycum

* The SENĆOŦEN name for a non-Saanich community.

** Sooke Orthography name.

Consonants

  bilabial interdental alveolar lateral palato-alveolar palatal velar rounded velar uvular rounded uvular glottal
voiceless stop
P
T
Ć
C
Ȼ
Ḵ
Ḱ
,
ejective stop
B
Ⱦ
D
Ṯ
J
Q
K
₭
voiceless fricative
Ŧ
S / s (Z)
Ƚ
Ś
W̱
X
X̱
H
nasal / resonant
M
N
L
Y
Ṉ
W

Vowels

  front central back
high
I (Í)
U
mid
A / Á (Ⱥ)
E
low
O

Notes

  • SENĆOŦEN’s orthography and the phonology of the language match quite well. However, there are some differences. The orthography does not differentiate between plain resonants: /l/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /w/, /y/ and their glottalised counterparts: /l̓/, /m̓/, /n̓/, /ŋ̓/, /w̓/, /y̓/. So the letter ‹M› could be either /m/ or /m̓/.
  • The interdental ejective stop ‹Ⱦ› /t̓θ/ may sound more like [t̓s].
  • The letters ‹Z› and ‹C› are used for non-Native borrowings.
  • Glottal stops ‹,› are only occasionally indicated, but not at the begining or end of a word.
  • The lowercase ‹s› is used only for the 3rd person possessive suffix.
  • The system provides single graphemes (letters) for pure vowels as well as three diphthongs: /ey/ is ‹Ⱥ›, /ǝw/ is ‹U›, and /ǝy/ or /ɑy/ is ‹Í›.
    • Diphthongs ending in /w/ or /y/ which do not have a unique glyph are written with /U/ or /I/ as the second part instead of /W/ or /Y/.
    • The vowel sound /e/ is usually written /Á/ unless it occurs beside a uvular sound, where is is written /A/.
    • The letter /U/ indicates the native diphthong /ǝw/ as well as the sound /u/ (occuring in borrowed words only).

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Last Update: November 11, 2009