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• 1 2025-04-30T13:40:04+00:00 The Place of SENĆOŦEN in the Salishan Language Family 1 plain 2025-04-30T13:40:04+00:00 SENĆOŦEN is a dialect of the language that linguists call Northern Straits. The Northern Straits language was originally spoken in Canada on southern Vancouver Island, on the islands of southern Georgia Strait, and the islands across the Haro and Rosario Straits to the United States mainland areas around Blaine and Bellingham, Washington. The SENĆOŦEN dialect is spoken by the W̱SÁNEĆ (Saanich) people, whose home territory is the Saanich Peninsula and the neighboring small islands into the San Juans. The other dialects of Northern Straits are Lummi (W̱LEMEĆOSEN), Samish (SIN¸ÁMEŚ), Semiahmoo (SEMYOME), Songish (LEQEṈIN¸EṈ), and Sooke (W̱SO¸EȻḴEN). Each of the dialects has its own name, but there is no native term that covers the whole collection called Northern Straits. These six dialects are considered to be a single language by linguists because they are all mutually intelligible—speakers of different dialects can easily understand each other. The differences among them are about as extreme as the differences among standard Canadian, American, British, Australian, and New Zealand English.
  
  Of the six Northern Straits dialects, LEQEṈIN¸EṈ is the most similar to SENĆOŦEN. The most different of the dialects is W̱SO¸EȻḴEN. There are a few differences in the vocabulary, sounds, and grammar that make each dialect unique. Two features of SENĆOŦEN stand out as distinct from all the other dialects. The W̱SÁNEĆ people have a long history of intermarriage with their neighbors to the north, the Cowichans, who speak Hul’q’umin’um’, a different language from Northern Straits. SENĆOŦEN, therefore, shares a larger number of vocabulary items and sounds with that language. The word for ‘spring salmon’ is a good example of shared vocabulary between Hul’q’umin’um’ (from Gerdts 1997) and SENĆOŦEN. Here is the word for ‘spring salmon’ in each dialect (Semiahmoo is not documented but is reported to be closest to Lummi):
  Hul’q’umin’um’:         st’haqwi’ /st̕ᶿáqʷiʔ/
  SENĆOŦEN:                   SȾOḰI¸     /st̕ᶿáqʷiʔ/
  Lummi:                       yáməč
  Samish:                       yáməč
  Songish:                      kʷítšən
  Sooke:                        kʷítšən
  
  SENĆOŦEN is unique among the Northern Straits dialects in having the dental sounds /θ/ and /t̕ᶿ/, which are represented in the spelling by Ŧ and Ⱦ. This is another feature that it shares with Hul’q’umin’um’. The other Northern Straits dialects have /s/ and /c̕/ in words where SENĆOŦEN has Ŧ and Ⱦ. A major grammatical feature that makes SENĆOŦEN different from all the neighboring languages and dialects is the lack of the particle /ʔəɬ/, which introduces subordinate clauses with the meaning ‘while’ or ‘whenever’ and is used in adverbial constructions. SENĆOŦEN uses Ȼ clauses (§46) where all of the other Northern Straits dialects as well as Klallam and Hul’q’umin’um’ have /ʔəɬ/ subordinate clauses. These differences are noticeable, but not enough to seriously hamper mutual comprehension among speakers of the Northern Straits dialects.
  
  Northern Straits is one of a family of languages called Salishan or just Salish. The diagram on the next page is a ‘family tree’ of the Salishan languages. It shows how each language is related to the others and shows roughly the geographic relationships among the languages. Languages toward the top of the diagram are more northern and those toward the bottom are more southern. Those on the left are western and those on the right are to the east. All of the languages are spoken in British Columbia or Washington except Tillamook, which is in Oregon, and the Salish language (which the entire family was named for), whose territory goes from eastern Washington across northern Idaho into northwestern Montana.
  
  Each of the languages and dialects has its own native name. However, except for SENĆOŦEN, which is called Saanich in English, the names of the languages and dialects shown here are the English names that traditionally appear in the linguistic and anthropological literature. This tree is based on the organization proposed by Thompson (1979). Another proposal (Kuipers 2002) places Bella Coola with the Coast branch.
  
  As the family tree shows, the two languages Northern Straits and Klallam form a subgroup called ‘Straits’ within the Central Coast Salishan languages. This indicates the very close relationship between SENĆOŦEN and Klallam. Most of the words in SENĆOŦEN are the same or very similar to words in the Klallam. A speaker of Klallam could learn SENĆOŦEN easily, and vice versa. For more technical details, see the various items in the bibliography.