The Sound of the Southern Carrier / Dakelh language (Numbers, Greetings & The Book of John)

Carrier is generally regarded as one of three members of the central British Columbia subgroup of Athabaskan, the other two being Babine-Witsuwit'en and Tŝilhqot’in. Carrier proper consists of two regional dialect groups, Dakelh (ᑕᗸᒡ) and Southern Carrier, where the latter is divided into two subgroups, Fraser/Nechakoh and Blackwater which are further subdivided into the individual dialects.

The Fraser/Nechakoh subdivision of Southern Carrier includes the Lheidli, Saik'uz, Nadleh, Nautey, Stelakoh, Stoney Creek, Prince George, and Cheslatta dialects. The Blackwater division includes the Anahim Lake, Red Bluff, Nazko, Kluskus, and Ulkatcho dialects, and is is mutually comprehensible with all other Carrier dialects.

Southern Carrier has an extremely extensive and productive system of noun classifications. It has multiple classification subsystems and they can take place in the same sentence or same verb.

The etymology of 'Carrier'

The name 'Carrier' is a translation of the Sekani name 'aghele' meaning “people who carry things around on their backs", due to the fact that the first Europeans to learn of the Carrier, the Northwest Company explorers led by Alexander Mackenzie, first passed through the territory of the Carriers' Sekani neighbors. The received view of the origin of the Sekani name is that it refers to the distinctive Carrier mortuary practice in which a widow carried her husband's ashes on her back during the period of mourning. An alternative hypothesis is that it refers to the fact that the Dakelh, unlike the Sekani, participated in trade with the coast, which required packing loads of goods over the Grease Trails (also known as the “Alexander Mackenzie Heritage Trail”).

Writing system

Carrier was formerly written in the Carrier syllabary, or Déné Syllabics, which was devised by missionary and linguist Adrien-Gabriel Morice in 1885. He adapted it from the syllabic writing systems developed for the Athabaskan languages of the Northwest Territories of Canada by Emile Petitot, and from the Cree Syllabics developed by James Evans.

A good deal of scholarly material, together with the first edition of the 'Little Catechism' and the third edition of a 'Prayerbook', is written in the writing system used by the missionary priest Adrien-Gabriel Morice in his scholarly work. This writing system was a somewhat idiosyncratic version of the phonetic transcription of the time. It is subphonemic and was never used by Carrier people themselves, though many learned to read the Prayerbook in it.

The Carrier syllabary was widely used for several decades for such purposes as writing diaries and letters and leaving messages on trees, but began to fade from use in the 1930s. Though the syllabary is no longer used or understood by many people, there has been a recent revival of interest in it and it occasionally appears on plaques and memorials.

In the 1960s, the Carrier Linguistic Committee in Fort St James developed an alternative writing system based on the Latin alphabet, designed to be typed on a standard English typewriter.

It uses numerous digraphs and trigraphs to write the many Carrier consonants not found in English, e.g. ⟨gh⟩ for [ɣ] and ⟨lh⟩ for [ɬ], with an apostrophe to mark glottalization, e.g. ⟨ts'⟩ for the ejective alveolar affricate. Letters generally have their English rather than European values. For example, ⟨u⟩ represents /ə/ while ⟨oo⟩ represents /u/. The only diacritic it uses in its standard form is the underscore, which is written under the sibilants (⟨s̠⟩, ⟨z̠⟩, ⟨t̠s̠⟩, and ⟨d̠z̠⟩) to indicate that the consonant is laminal denti-alveolar rather than apical alveolar. An acute accent is sometimes used to mark high tone, but tone is not routinely written in Dakelh.

Currently, the Latin-inspired CLC script is the most commonly used writing system for Dakelh.

Syntax

In general terms, Carrier is a head-final language: the verb comes at the end of the clause, adpositions are postpositions rather than prepositions, and complementizers follow their clause. However, it is not consistently head-final: in head-external relative clauses, the relative clause follows the head noun. Carrier has both head-internal and head-external relative clauses. The subject usually precedes the object if one is present.

Carrier is an 'everything-drop' language. A verb can form a grammatical sentence by itself. It is not in general necessary for the subject or object to be expressed overtly by a noun phrase or pronoun.

Contact with other languages

Dakelh is neighbored on the west by Babine-Witsuwit'en and Haisla, to the north by Sekani, to the southeast by Shuswap, to the south by Chilcotin, and to the southwest by Nuxalk. Furthermore, in the past few centuries, with the westward movement of the Plains Cree, there has been contact with the Cree from the East. Dakelh has borrowed from some of these languages, but apparently not in large numbers. Loans from Cree include [məsdus] ('cow') from Cree (which originally meant "buffalo" but extended to "cow" already in Cree) and [sunija] ('money, precious metal'). There are also loans from languages that do not directly neighbor Dakelh territory. A particularly interesting example is [maj] ('berry, fruit'), a loan from Gitksan, which has been borrowed into all Dakelh dialects and has displaced the original Athabascan word.

European contact has brought loans from a number of sources. The majority of demonstrable loans into Dakelh are from French, though it is not generally clear whether they come directly from French or via Chinook Jargon. Loans from French include [liɡok] ('chicken') (from French le coq 'rooster'), [lisel] (from le sel 'salt'), and [lizas] ('angel'). As these examples show, the French article is normally incorporated into the Dakelh borrowing. A single loan from Spanish is known: [mandah] ('canvas, tarpaulin'), apparently acquired from Spanish-speaking packers.

The trade language Chinook Jargon came into use among Dakelh people as a result of European contact. Most Dakelh people never knew Chinook Jargon. It appears to have been known in most areas primarily by men who had spent time freighting on the Fraser River. Knowledge of Chinook Jargon may have been more common in the southwestern part of Dakelh country due to its use at Bella Coola. The southwestern dialects have more loans from Chinook Jargon than other dialects. For example, while most dialects use the Cree loan described above for "money", the southwestern dialects use [tʃikəmin], which is from Chinook Jargon. The word [daji] ('chief') is a loan from Chinook Jargon.

European contact brought many new objects and ideas. The names for some were borrowed, but in most cases terms have been created using the morphological resources of the language, or by extending or shifting the meaning of existing terms. Thus, [tɬʼuɬ] now means not only "rope" but also "wire", while [kʼa] has shifted from its original meaning of "arrow" to mean "cartridge" and [ʔəɬtih] has shifted from "bow" to "rifle". [hutʼəp], originally "leeches" now also means "pasta". A microwave oven is referred to as [ʔa benəlwəs] ('that by means of which things are warmed quickly'). "Mustard" is [tsʼudənetsan] ('children's feces'), presumably after the texture and color rather than the flavor.

 Place names in Dakelh

Here are the Dakelh names for some of the major places in Dakelh territory, written in the Carrier Linguistic Committee writing system:

Sign saying "Wheni Lheidli T'enneh ts'inli" meaning “We are Lheidli T'enneh” in the Lheidli dialect.

• Mount Pope – Nak'al

• Fort St. James – Nakʼaz̠dli

• Stuart Lake – Nakʼalbun

• Stuart River – Nakʼalkoh

• Fraser Lake – Nadlehbun

• Nautley River – Nadlehkoh

• Endako River – Ndakoh

• Stellako River – Stellakoh

• Tachie River – Duzdlikoh

• Nechako River – Nechakoh

• Fraser River – Lhtakoh

• Prince George - Lheidli

• Babine Lake – Nadobun

• Burns Lake – T̠s̠elhkʼazkoh

• Francois Lake – Nedabun

• Cluculz Lake – Lhoohkʼuz

Fluent Speakers

Figures reported in 2014 stated about 680 fluent speakers of Carrier, and another 1,380 people with some knowledge of the language.

According to a 2016 census conducted by the Government of Canada, there were 1,270 fluent speakers of the Carrier language. Among the 1,270 speakers, 1,045 have the language as a single mother tongue and 225 have the language as one of their mother tongues.

Status

Like most of the languages of British Columbia, Dakelh is an endangered language. Only about 10% of Dakelh people now speak the Dakelh language, hardly any of them children. Members of the generation following that of the last speakers can often understand the language but they do not contribute to its transmission.

The UNESCO status of Carrier/Dakelh is "Severely Endangered", which means the language rates an average of 2/5 on UNESCO's 9 factors of language vitality, with 5 being safe and 0 being extinct. According to Dwyer's article on tools and techniques for endangered language assessment and revitalization, the three most critical factors out of the nine are factors numbered one - intergenerational transmission, three - proportion of speakers within the total population, and four - proportion of speakers within the total population. Carrier scores in the "severely endangered" category for all three of these most important factors, as well as most of the nine.

Revitalization and Maintenance Efforts

Carrier is taught as a second language in both public and band schools throughout the territory. This instruction provides an acquaintance with the language but has not proven effective in producing functional knowledge of the language. Carrier has also been taught at the University of Northern British Columbia, the College of New Caledonia, and the University of British Columbia. Several communities have underway mentor-apprentice programs and language nests.

The Yinka Dene Language Institute (YDLI) is charged with the maintenance and promotion of Dakelh language and culture. Its activities include research, archiving, curriculum development, teacher training, literacy instruction, and production of teaching and reference materials.

Prior to the founding of YDLI in 1988 the Carrier Linguistic Committee, a group based in Fort Saint James affiliated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, produced a number of publications in Dakelh, literacy materials for several dialects, a 3000-entry dictionary of the Stuart Lake dialect, and various other materials.

The Carrier Linguistic Committee is largely responsible for literacy among younger speakers of the language. The Carrier Bible Translation Committee produced a translation of the New Testament that was published in 1995. An adaptation to Blackwater dialect appeared in 2002.

Documentation efforts have been varied and the extent of documentation differs considerably from dialect to dialect. By far the best-documented dialect is the Stuart Lake dialect, of which Father Adrien-Gabriel Morice published a massive grammar and dictionary. More recent work includes the publication of some substantial pieces of text by the Carrier Linguistic Committee, the publication of a grammar sketch, and the on-going creation of a large electronic dictionary, with a corresponding print version, that contains earlier material, including Morice's, as well as much new material. For other dialects, there are print and/or electronic dictionaries ranging from 1,500 or so entries up to over 9,000.

FirstVoices Language Learning

FirstVoices Website

FirstVoices is an online indigenous language archiving and learning resource administered by the First Peoples' Cultural Council of British Columbia, Canada. Dakelh/Southern Carrier language is one of the languages documented on the website. Information on alphabets, words, phrases, songs, and stories are available. Both orthography and voice recordings are provided on the website. Games and a kids portal are also available for pre-readers to engage with the language.

FirstVoices App

The Nazko-Dakelh mobile application has a bilingual dictionary and a collection of Dakelh/Southern Carrier language phrases that are archived on the FirstVoices website. It is available for free on both Apple and Android mobile operating systems.

Download a script charts for Carrier (Excel)

The Sound of the Yurok language (Numbers, Sentences & Phrases)

Yurok (also Chillula, Mita, Pekwan, Rikwa, Sugon, Weitspek, and Weitspekan) is an Algic language. It is the traditional language of the Yurok of Del Norte County and Humboldt County on the northwest coast of California. The name Yurok comes from the Karuk ‘yuruk’, literally meaning 'downriver'. The Yurok traditional name for themselves is Puliklah, from ‘pulik’ (‘downstream') + -’la’ ('people of'), thus equivalent in meaning to the Karuk name by which they came to be known in English.

Yurok is distantly related to its neighbor Wiyot, and to languages belonging to the Algonquian language family spoken across central and eastern North America, including Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibwe, and many others. Linguists believe that Wiyot, Yurok, and all the Algonquian languages descend from a single common ancestor spoken thousands of years ago, perhaps somewhere in present-day eastern Washington or Oregon or northern Idaho. The relations and history of these languages are areas of active research among linguists, archaeologists, and historians.

Yurok nouns and verbs are assembled and change their forms in patterns that are sometimes elaborate, expressing a variety of meanings. Unlike English, where most nouns change their form to make them plural (cat vs. cats, for example, or man vs. men), Yurok nouns usually do not change their form: puesee can mean "cat" or "cats", and 'yoch can mean "boat" or "boats". However, a very few nouns do change their form:

mewah  mewahsegoh  perey  pegerey  wer'yers wer'yernerk  huuek huueksoh

“Boy” “Boys” “Old Woman” “Old Women “Girl” “Girls” “Child” “Children”

However, unlike English, Yurok nouns do sometimes change their form to refer to locations:

mech  mecheek  yoch  yoncheek "

“Fire” “in the fire” “boat” “in a boat”

Verbs, meanwhile, can change depending on the subject:

kooychkwok’ kooychkwoh  kooychkwoom' 

“I buy it.” “we buy it” “you buy it”

"kooychkwoow'  kooychkwom’  kooychkwohl

“You (plural) buy it.” “He/She buys it.” “They buy it”

A fascinating aspect of the Yurok language, one that is quite unlike English, is the intricate way that certain meaningful elements combine in the formation of verbs. The table below illustrates typical combinations of elements, used to form verbs with distinct but related meanings. Notice the elements heem- "fast", kwomhl- "back", pkw- "out from an enclosed area", and yohp- "in a circle", to which are added -ech- "go" and -o'rep- "run":

heemechok heemo'repek  kwomhlechok kwomhlo'repek

“I hurry” “I run quickly” “I return” I run back”

pkwechok pkwo'repek' yohpechok'  yohpo'repek' 

“I emerge” “I run out of an enclosed area” “I go in a circle” “I run in a circle”

Yurok sentence patterns are quite different from English patterns; in English, most sentences contain at least a verb (a word like walk, see, know, etc., usually naming an action, experience, situation, etc.) and a subject (indicating who did the action, experienced a situation, etc.): The horse walked, or My teacher sees you, or Your children love pie. But a verb is enough in Yurok, and many Yurok sentences consist of a single word — a verb:

Hlmeyorkwochek' Kwerykweryochem'. 'Sleryhlkerp'erk'

I'm afraid of you.' ‘You are whistling.’ ‘I’m going to blow my nose.’

In English, the basic word order of subject, verb, and object (in sentences that have objects, for example indicating who or what an action was done to) is usually fixed. In Yurok the order of these elements is flexible, depending largely on emphasis and discourse structure. For example, if the context is unambiguous, either of the following sentences might be interchangeable:

Kue pegerk helomey' Helomey' kue pegerk

[article] man to dance - 3sg.infl to dance - 3sg.infl [article] man

The man dances. the man dances.

Compared to English, Yurok word order possibilities are more flexible in sentences like these, but it is not always straightforward to learn the emphasis and discourse patterns that determine which order is used.

One important way Yurok and English sentence patterns differ is that Yurok has a large class of preverbs: short words, typically, that express relative time, location, negation, and relations between events, among many other meanings. As the name suggests, preverbs occur before the verb in a sentence. In the following sentences, for example, the preverb keech means something recently started happening and is still happening, the preverb kee means something will happen in the future, and the preverb combination keech + ho means something has already happened (and is still true).

Keech keepuen Kee kochpoksek' Kues keech ho neskwechoom'? Kues keech ho neskwechoom'?'

“It’s winter (now)” “I will think it over.” “I will think it over.” “When did you arive?”

Preverbs are used in almost every Yurok sentence, and it is common for two, three, or even more to be combined in a sentence. The idiomatic use of preverb combinations is an indication of real fluency in the language.

Decline of the language began during the California Gold Rush, due to the influx of new settlers and the diseases they brought with them. Native American boarding schools initiated by the United States government with the intent of incorporating the native populations of America into mainstream American society increased the rate of decline of the language. The language was officially declared extinct with the death of Archie Thompson, the last native speaker, on March 26, 2013

However, a language revival program The program to revive Yurok has been lauded as the most successful language revitalization program in California. As of 2014, there are six schools in Northern California that teach Yurok - 4 high schools and 2 elementary schools.

The last known native speaker, Archie Thompson, was the last of 20 elders who helped revitalize the language over the last few decades, after academics in the 1990s predicted it would be extinct by 2010. He made recordings of the language that were archived by UC Berkeley linguists and the tribe, spent hours helping to teach Yurok in community and school classrooms, and welcomed apprentice speakers to probe his knowledge." Linguists at UC Berkeley began the Yurok Language Project in 2001. Professor Andrew Garrett and Dr. Juliette Blevins collaborated with tribal elders on a Yurok dictionary that has been hailed as a national model. The Yurok Language Project has gone much more in depth than just a printed lexicon, however. The dictionary is available online and fully searchable. It is also possible to search an audio dictionary - a repository of audio clips of words and short phrases.

As of February 2013, there were over 300 basic Yurok speakers, 60 with intermediate skills, 37 who are advanced, and 17 who are considered conversationally fluent. As of 2014, nine people were certified to teach Yurok in schools. Since Yurok, like many other Native American languages, uses a master-apprentice system to train up speakers in the language, having even nine certified teachers would not be possible without a piece of legislation passed in 2009 in the state of California that allows indigenous tribes the power to appoint their own language teachers.

Other resources with more detailed information include R. H. Robins's book The Yurok language: Texts, grammar, lexicon (1958) and a Yurok Language Project booklet Basic Yurok grammar (2010), which can be download here.

The Sound of the Salish Language (Numbers, Greetings, Phrases & Story)

The Salish or Séliš language, also known as Kalispel–Pend d'oreille, Kalispel–Spokane–Flathead, or, to distinguish it from the Salish language family to which it gave its name, Montana Salish, is a Salishan language with dialects spoken (as of 2005) by about 64 elders of the Flathead Nation in north central Montana and of the Kalispel (Qalispé) in northeastern Washington, and by another 50 elders (as of 2000) of the Spokane (Npoqínišcn) of Washington.

As with many other languages of northern North America, Salish is polysynthetic; like other languages of the Mosan language area, there is no clear distinction between nouns and verbs. Salish is famous for native translations that treat all lexical Salish words as verbs or clauses in English—for instance, translating a two-word Salish clause that would appear to mean "I-killed a-deer" into English as I killed it. It was a deer.

As of 2012, Salish is "critically endangered" in Montana and Idaho according to UNESCO, with all native speakers being elderly. However efforts are being made to revive it: it is taught and used as a language of instruction at a number of regional schools, like the Nkwusm Salish Immersion School, in Arlee, Montana.

Public schools in Kalispell, Montana offer language classes, a language nest, and intensive training for adults. An online Salish Language Tutor and online Kalispel Salish curriculum are available. A dictionary, "Seliš nyoʔnuntn: Medicine for the Salish Language," was expanded from 186 to 816 pages in 2009; children's books and language CDs are also available.

The Salish Kootenai College, offers Salish language courses, and trains Salish language teachers at its Native American Language Teacher Training Institute as a part of its ongoing efforts to preserve the language, and the college even broadcasts programs in Salish on the Salish Kootenai College TV station. As of May 2013, the organization Yoyoot Skʷkʷimlt ("Strong Young People") is teaching language classes in high schools.

Salish-language Christmas carols are popular for children's holiday programs, which have been broadcast over the Salish Kootenai College television station, and Salish-language karaoke has become popular at the annual Celebrating Salish Conference, held in Spokane, Washington. As of 2013, many signs on U.S. Route 93 in the Flathead Indian Reservation include the historic Salish and Kutenai names for towns, rivers, and streams. The Missoula City Council is seeking input from the Salish-Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee regarding appropriate Salish-language signage for the City of Missoula.

The Sound of the Tlingit language (Numbers, Greetings, Phrases & Story)

The Tlingit language is spoken by the Tlingit people in Southeast Alaska from Yakutat (Yaakwdáat, Yàkwdât) south to Portland Canal, and from British Columbia into south-central Yukon Territory between Tagish and Kaska northward. The Tlingit language is distantly related to Eyak and the Athabaskan languages as a branch of the Na-Dene language family, and is part of the larger Dené–Yeniseian language family. Although the name is spelled “Tlingit” in English it is actually pronounced closer to “Klinkit”. This is due to the spelling and the pronunciation in English having two different approximations of the voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ] spelled as either ł or l in Tlingit.

The history of Tlingit is poorly known, mostly because there is no written record until the first contact with Europeans around the 1790s. Documentation was sparse and irregular until the early 20th century. The language appears to have spread northward from the Ketchikan–Saxman area towards the Chilkat region since certain conservative features are reduced gradually from south to north. The shared features between the Eyak language, found around the Copper River delta, and Tongass Tlingit, near the Portland Canal, are all the more striking for the distances that separate them, both geographic and linguistic.

Tlingit word order is SOV when non-pronominal agent and object phrases both exist in the sentence. However, there is a strong urge to restrict the argument of the verb phrase to a single non-pronominal noun phrase, with any other phrases being extraposed from the verb phrase. If a noun phrase occurs outside of the verb phrase then it is typically represented in the verb phrase by an appropriate pronoun.

Despite not being a fusional language, Tlingit is still highly synthetic as an agglutinating language, and is even polysynthetic to some extent. The verb, as with all the Na-Dené languages, is characteristically incorporating. Nouns are in comparison relatively simple, with many being derived from verbs.

Extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve the Tlingit language and culture.

The Sound of the Nootka / Nuu-chah-nulth language (Numbers, Sentences, Phrases & Story)

Nuu-chah-nulth, also known as Nootka, is Wakashan language historically spoken on the west coast of Vancouver Island, from Barkley Sound to Quatsino Sound in British Columbia by the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples. Nuu-chah-nulth is a Southern Wakashan language related to Nitinaht and Makah.

It is the first language of the indigenous peoples of the Cascadian Coast to have documentary written materials describing it. In the 1780s, Captains Vancouver, Quadra, and other European explorers and traders frequented Nootka Sound and the other Nuu-chah-nulth communities, making reports of their voyages. From 1803–1805 John R. Jewitt, an English blacksmith, was held captive by chief Maquinna at Nootka Sound. He made an effort to learn the language, and in 1815 published a memoir with a brief glossary of its terms.

The Nuu-chah-nulth language contributed much of the vocabulary of the Chinook Jargon. It is thought that oceanic commerce and exchanges between the Nuu-chah-nulth and other Southern Wakashan speakers with the Chinookan-speaking peoples of the lower Columbia River led to the foundations of the trade jargon that became known as Chinook. Nootkan words in Chinook Jargon include hiyu ("many"), from Nuu-chah-nulth for "ten", siah ("far"), from the Nuu-chah-nulth for "sky".

A dictionary of the language, with some 7,500 entries, was created after 15 years of research. It is based on both work with current speakers and notes from linguist Edward Sapir, taken almost a century ago. The dictionary, however, is a subject of controversy, with a number of Nuu-chah-nulth elders questioning the author's right to disclose their language.

The provenance of the term "Nuu-chah-nulth", meaning "along the outside [of Vancouver Island]" dates from the 1970s, when the various groups of speakers of this language joined together, disliking the term "Nootka" (which means "go around" and was mistakenly understood to be the name of a place, which was actually called Yuquot). The name given by earlier sources for this language is Tahkaht; that name was used also to refer to themselves (the root aht means "people").

Translations of place names

Nuuchahnulth had a name for each place within their traditional territory. These are just a few still used to this day:

• hisaawista (esowista) – Captured by clubbing the people who lived there to death, Esowista Peninsula and Esowista Indian Reserve No. 3.

• Yuquot (Friendly Cove) – Where they get the north winds, Yuquot

• nootk-sitl (Nootka) – Go around.

• maaqtusiis – A place across the island, Marktosis

• kakawis – Fronted by a rock that looks like a container.

• kitsuksis – Log across mouth of creek

• opitsaht – Island that the moon lands on, Opitsaht

• pacheena – Foamy.

• tsu-ma-uss (somass) – Washing, Somass River

• tsahaheh – To go up.

• hitac`u (itatsoo) – Ucluelet Reserve.

• t’iipis – Polly’s Point.

• Tsaxana – A place close to the river.

• Cheewat – Pulling tide.

The Sound of the Haida language (Numbers, Greetings, Sentences & Phrases)

Haida (X̱aat Kíl, X̱aadas Kíl, X̱aayda Kil, Xaad kil) is the language of the Haida people, spoken in the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the coast of British Columbia and on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. An endangered language, Haida currently has 24 native speakers, though revitalization efforts are underway.

At the time of the European arrival at Haida Gwaii in 1774, it is estimated that Haida speakers numbered about 15,000. Epidemics soon led to a drastic reduction in the Haida population, which became limited to three villages: Masset, Skidegate, and Hydaburg. Positive attitudes towards assimilation combined with the ban on speaking Haida in residential schools led to a sharp decline in the use of the Haida language among the Haida people, and today almost all ethnic Haida use English to communicate.

Classification of the Haida language is a matter of controversy, with some linguists placing it in the Na-Dené language family and others arguing that it is a language isolate. Haida itself is split between Northern and Southern dialects, which differ primarily in phonology. The Northern Haida dialects have developed pharyngeal consonants, typologically uncommon sounds which are also found in some of the nearby Salishan and Wakashan languages.

The Haida sound system includes ejective consonants, glottalized sonorants, contrastive vowel length, and phonemic tone. The nature of tone differs between the dialects, and in Alaskan Haida it is primarily a pitch accent system. Syllabic laterals appear in all dialects of Haida, but are only phonemic in Skidegate Haida. Extra vowels which are not present in Haida words occur in nonsense words in Haida songs. There are a number of systems for writing Haida using the Latin alphabet, each of which represents the sounds of Haida differently.

While Haida has nouns and verbs, it does not have adjectives and has few true adpositions. English adjectives translate into verbs in Haida, for example 'láa "(to be) good", and English prepositional phrases are usually expressed with Haida "relational nouns", for instance Alaskan Haida dítkw 'side facing away from the beach, towards the woods'. Haida verbs are marked for tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality, and person is marked by pronouns that are cliticized to the verb. Haida also has hundreds of classifiers. Haida has the rare direct-inverse word order type, where both SOV and OSV words orders occur depending on the "potency" of the subject and object of the verb. Haida also has obligatory possession, where certain types of nouns cannot stand alone and require a possessor.

Today most Haidas do not speak the Haida language. The language is listed as "critically endangered" in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, with nearly all speakers elderly. As of 2003, most speakers of Haida are between 70 and 80 years of age, though they speak a "considerably simplified" form of Haida, and comprehension of the language is mostly limited to persons above the age of 50. The language is rarely used even among the remaining speakers and comprehenders.

The Haida have a renewed interest in their traditional culture, and are now funding Haida language programs in schools in the three Haida communities, though these have been ineffectual.  Haida classes are available in many Haida communities and can be taken at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, Ketchikan, and Hydaburg. A Skidegate Haida language app is available for iPhone, based on a "bilingual dictionary and phrase collection comprised of words and phrases archived at the online Aboriginal language database FirstVoices.com."

In 2017 Kingulliit Productions began filming on SGaawaay K’uuna ("Edge of the Knife"), the first feature film to be acted entirely in dialects of the Haida language.

The Sound of the Chinook Jargon language (Numbers, Greetings & Story)

Chinook Wawa (also known as Chinuk Wawa or Chinook Jargon, and sometimes Chinook Lelang) is a nearly extinct pidgin trade language that bordered on being a creole language which served as a true lingua franca of the Cascadia bioregion for several hundred years.

Partly related to, but not the same as, the aboriginal language of the Chinook people, Chinook Wawa actually has its roots in earlier regional trade languages, like Haida Jargon or Nookta Jargon, which itself was a simplified version of Nuu-chah-nulth combined with words and elements of the different Wakashan, Salishan, Athapaskan, and Penutian languages. With the arrival of European explorers, trappers, and traders, many new words were added from French and English, with modifications made in pronunciation, using only those sounds that could be pronounced with ease by all speakers. Grammatical forms were reduced to their simplest expression, and variations in mood and tense conveyed only by adverbs or by the context. With a relatively small lexicon of only a few hundred words, it is not only easy to learn but possible to say almost anything with a little patience and poetic imagination.

During the fur trade in the early 19th century,  Chinook Wawa had more than 100,000 speakers, spreading from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then British Columbia, and as far as Alaska and the Yukon Territory. It was used as a common trade language between the hundreds of indigenous tribes and nations from the region and was incorporated by early English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and other immigrants, pioneers, and traders who made the area their home, and naturally became the first language in multi-racial households and in multi-ethnic work environments such as canneries, lumberyards, and ranches where it remained the language of the workplace well into the middle of the 20th century.

HOW IS IT PRONOUNCED?

As a trade language, Chinook Wawa is by its very nature meant to be usable by people from many different linguistic backgrounds, so naturally, there is no "correct" pronunciation. An individual's pronunciation of a word was necessarily going to be dependent on that person's own language and dialect, be it English, French, Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, Chinese, or even Hawaiian.

Furthermore, all published lexicons were created by English speakers influenced by standard English spelling methods (and, as everyone knows, there is no consistency at all in English spelling). Still, the wide variation in spellings for many words can give a clue to their potential variation in pronunciation, or for a pronunciation that falls "in-between" the sounds represented (i.e. hiyu / hyiu / hyo is one example, and tikegh / tikke / ticky is another). Though existent in Chinook Jargon, the consonant /r/ is rare, and English and French loan words, such as ‘rice’ and ‘merci’, have changed in their adoption to the Jargon, to ‘lice’ and ‘mahsie’, respectively.

CHINOOK WAWA TODAY.

As a result of deliberate measures of genocide and cultural suppression in the United States and Canada, aboriginal languages, including Chinook Wawa, were suppressed or outright banned, resulting in a decline of speakers. While Chinook Wawa has fallen from use in the late 20th century, it has lived on in many toponyms throughout Cascadia, within many indigenous languages, and in some regional English usage, to the point where most people are unaware that the word or name is originally from Chinook Wawa.

Chinuk Wawa was classified as extinct until the 2000s when it was revived, notably in 2014 with the release of Chinuk Wawa—As Our Elders Teach Us to Speak It by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, who have since launched the Chinuk Wawa Immersion Language Program. In 2018 a textbook for Chinook Jargon in Esperanto (La Chinuka Interlingvo Per Esperanto,] The Chinook Bridge-Language Using Esperanto) was published by Sequoia Edwards. In 2019 "Chinuk Wawa" became available as a language option on the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own. With a steadily growing interest in Cascadia and its history, Chinook Wawa is seeing a gradual resurgence.