The Salishan languages were spoken aboriginally along the Pacific Coast of British Columbia and Washington and eastward into western Montana. The homeland of the protolanguage was probably the delta of the Fraser River—the center of the coastal language distribution and the head of a route into the interior. Kootenay, a language isolate, may have a common ancestry with proto-Salish, based on two dozen similarities.
By 1800 the Salishan family consisted of twenty-three interlinked languages, separated by the Cascade Range into Coast (sixteen members) and Interior (seven members) divisions. Each member language also included several internal dialects.
The four branches within Coast Salish include Bella Coola (northernmost), Central, Tsamosan, and Tillamook (on the Oregon coast). Central Coast Salish, centered in the border homeland, includes Comox, Sechelt, Pentlatch, Squamish, Nooksak, Halkomelem (including Chilliwack, Musqueam, and Cowichan), Straits (including intergrading Sooke, Saanich, Songhees, Lummi, Samish, Semiahmoo, and Klallam, the most distinct), Twana, and Lushootseed (Puget). Tsamosan, sometimes called Olympic, includes Cowlitz, Upper (including Satsop) and Lower Chehalis, and Quinault.
Interior Salish, which arose later, consists of St'at'imcets (Lillooet), Nlakapamuxcin (Thompson), and Sexwepemuxcin (Shuswap) in British Columbia; the three Columbia River dialect chains of Methow-Okanogan-Nespelem-Sanpoil-Colvile-Lakes, Chelan-Entiat-Wenatchi-Columbian, and Kalispel-Spokan-Selish (Flathead); and, in Idaho, Coeur d'Alene.
As an example of internal diversity, Lushootseed, spoken north and south of modern Seattle, has two dialect chains: southern (Sahewamish-Nisqually-Puyallup-Duwamish-Suquamish-Snoqual-mi) and northern (Snohomish-Stillaguamish-Skagit). The Skykomish, about whom we know little, seem to have been intermediary between these two chains. Culturally, the most important distinction is the use of four as the pattern number in the north and of five in the south, presumably a borrowing from the Columbia River Chinook and upriver Plateau tribes.
Salishan languages consist overwhelmingly of verbs, with secondary additions to suggest that nouns are merely verbs made to hold still, and of consonants—often the same sounds spoken in both plain and glottalized (pronounced in the throat) versions. While three to five vowels are used, in rapid speech the vowels drop out so words with strings of four to six consonants are common. Indeed, Bella Coola, the first branch to separate, has many words without vowels. Further, particular sounds are characteristic of certain branches, such as the ng sound that occurs only in Straits.
As a family, Salish employs numerous suffixes and syllable copying (reduplication) to express shades of meaning. Unlike English, prefixes and infixes are uncommon.
The major categories of Salish grammar are aspect, transitivity, voice, person, gender, and control, with tense and number optional, depending on the individual language. Aspect indicates the manner or way in which something is done. In Salish, at least, aspect includes whether or not something is ongoing (durative), stative, or active. Transitivity—taking an object or not—is indicated by suffixes. Both active and passive voices occur, as do person (first, second, third) and gender (as female or other). Tense, to mark time, and number (singular or not) occur in many of these languages. Control, which is distinctive but not unique to Salish, automatically specifies the degree of involvement or care a speaker has in an action, ranging from the accidental to limited or full control. In English, lack of or limited control is often translated as "managed to," as in I poured it (full control), I managed to pour it (limited), I spilled it (lack). In Salish, all three ideas can be expressed by the same word modified by syllables indicating degree of control.
These languages create analogies and metaphorical extensions through compound words that include terms referring to some body parts (mouth, nose, foot), geography (beach, stream, path), and artifacts (thread, house, canoe). For example, the word for a headland jutting into the water derives from "nose," as does one of the terms for a leader, "the one who 'noses' ahead."
As an example of local innovations and specializations, Lushootseed is characterized by an ancient reworking of the two sets of transitive person markers, regularization of the suffix system, and an elaboration of prefixes. Over a century ago, Lushootseed and neighboring non-Salishan languages (Twana, Chimakum, and Southern Nootkan) shifted away from nasals so that former m became b and former n changed to d. Thus, any snowcapped mountain is now called takoba, which is developed from the name that settlers heard as takoma (Tacoma) and attributed to Mt. Rainier and a nearby city. Since the Lummis and Klallams—nasal-using Straits Salish—were expanding their territories around 1800, the shift from nasals by Lushootseeds, Twanas, Chimakums, and Southern Nootkans may have been a response to Straits depredations. Speakers of Nooksak, Twana, and Lushootseed were displaced, to some extent, by Klallam colonies.
Technical and teaching grammars, dictionaries, and stories exist for almost all Salishan languages. Only Pentlatch and Nooksak, virtually extinct, are documented solely in manuscripts. Nevertheless, English and television are seriously eroding the perpetuation of these languages, which survive better in Canada, with its polyglot governmental policies, than in the United States. In Canada, some Salishan languages became extinct not because they were replaced by English but because so many speakers of another Salishan language had married into the community that the old language was replaced by another Salishan example; for instance, Halkomelem replaced Nooksak, and Pentlatch shifted to Comox.
Most linguists prefer to treat Salish as a distinct family, finding relations with other major native language groups hard to substantiate. Several decades ago a grouping was proposed to combine Salish with the neighboring Wakashan family and the transcontinental stock of Algonquian or Algic languages, but this superstock seems unlikely.
Among young people, Salish survives in disconnected words for particular kin, native foods, and special places. Names, still expressed in Salish rather than translated into English, continue to be passed on with feasting and formalities. Prayers and hymns to local spirits and the Creator also remain in these languages, and probably will do so forever.
Dale Kinkade, Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics 60 "Salish Evidence against the Universality of 'Noun' and 'Verb,'" no. 1 (1983): 25-39; Laurence Thompson, The Languages of Native North America: Historical and Comparative Assessment "Salishan and the Northwest," ed. Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979).
Jay Miller
Lenape
Lushootseed Research
