Halkomelem
Halkomelem is a language of various First Nations peoples of the British Columbia Coast. It is spoken in what is now British Columbia, ranging from southeastern Vancouver Island from the west shore of Saanich Inlet northward beyond Gabriola Island and Nanaimo to Nanoose Bay and including the Lower Mainland from the Fraser River Delta upriver to Harrison Lake and the lower boundary of the Fraser Canyon.
In the classification of Salishan languages, Halkomelem is a member of the Central Salish branch. There are four other branches of the family: Tsamosan, Interior Salish, Bella Coola, and Tillamook. Speakers of the Central and Tsamosan languages are often identified in ethnographic literature as "Coast Salish".
The word "Halkomelem" is an anglicization of the name Halq̓eméylem. The language has three distinct dialect groups:
- Hulquminum / Hulʼqʼumiʼnumʼ or "Cowichan", Snaw-naw-as – the former "Saalequun tribe" is part of both First Nations, Stzꞌuminus, Cowichan Tribes, Lake Cowichan, Halalt, Lyackson, Penelakut, and Lamalchi.
- Hunʼqumiʼnum / hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ or "Musqueam", but today often refer to themselves as "Musqueam", the Musqueam, Tsawwassen, Kwantlen, Tsleil-Waututh, New Westminster Indian Band, Kwikwetlem, Katzie, and the now extinct Snokomish
- Halqemeylem / Halqʼeméylem or "Stó꞉lō" , "Pelóxwlh Mestiyexw" , "Tiyt" or "Upper Stó꞉lō", "Pepa꞉thxetel" or "Semà꞉th ", and the "Sqʼéwlets/Sqwōwich" tribes.
Use and revitalization efforts
The Halkomelem language is near extinction. In 2000, it was estimated that the number of fluent Halkomelem speakers was fewer than twenty-five. Most are middle-aged or older, and few are monolingual, as there was a flood of English-speaking settlers in the region in the mid-19th century. Among these, towards the end of the century, the distinguished scientist Maud Menten, spent part of her childhood in Harrison Mills. She learned Halkomelem from a schoolfriend, and was possibly the only biochemist in history to speak it. Language programs at the Stó꞉lō Nation, Seabird Island First Nation, and Cowichan First Nation have been developed to save the language. A program aimed at adults at Musqueam is a collaboration between the band and the University of British Columbia First Nations and endangered languages program.In September 2009, the University of California Press published American linguist Brent Galloway's Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem.
A Halkomelem iPhone app was released in 2011. This was followed by an Android version was released in 2016. The app was developed by the FirstVoices website. There are 1754 words archived and 690 phrases archived on the FirstVoices website.
As of 2014, 263 fluent speakers had been reported. In 2014, the number of Head Start Programs was 21, and this included a language-nest immersion preschool.
Phonology
Note: All examples are drawn from the Downriver dialect of Halkomelem spoken by the Musqueam band. Relevant differences in the phonology of the Island and Upriver dialects are noted at the foot of the phoneme charts.Vowels
Halkomelem has five vowel phonemes. Long and short vowels contrast. Vowel length is written in the native orthography as or after the vowel letter depending on the orthography.All five vowel phonemes vary considerably phonetically. The phoneme /i/ has three distinct allophones. It is realized as following unrounded uvulars. It is realized as with a central off-glide preceding both unrounded and rounded uvulars. Elsewhere, it is realized as low or high. The /e/ is realized as a low to mid-front vowel, usually between or high. The /a/ is low and central to back, often close to. The /u/ is high, back, and rounded, realized somewhere between low or high.
When stressed, the schwa /ə/ appears in most environments as a mid-central, but it is fronted and raised before /x/, approaching ; before /j/ it is also fronted, approaching ; before /w/ it is lower and back, approaching ; and before rounded velars it is mid-back, close to. Unstressed /ə/ can be as high as before /x/ and /j/, and before labialized velars it is realized as or. This phoneme can also be assimilated to a stressed /e/ or a stressed /a/ in an adjacent syllable, by vowel harmony.
Consonants
The plain plosives are less aspirate before vowels than in English, but they are more aspirate finally. Although the glottalized plosives are ejectives, they are not usually strongly released.Suttles makes several interesting notes on the Musqueam obstruents. The labiodental fricative /f/ occurs in recent loans from English and their derivatives such as in káfi "coffee" and in číf "chief". The stops /t/ and /tʼ/ are articulated at a point slightly forward of that of the usual English /t d/, while the affricates c /ts/ and cʼ /tsʼ/ are somewhat more retracted than these same English /t d/. The affricate has only been recorded in kinjáj "English people" and kinjájqən "English ". The glottalized lateral affricate /ƛʼ/ is produced when the apex of the tongue at the onset is in the position for the lateral release rather than for a /t/, and there is less friction produced than with other affricates. The phonemes /k/ and /kʼ/ occur in "baby talk" as substitutes for /q/ and /qʼ/. The uvular fricative x̌ is produced with a great deal of friction and/or uvular vibration, and it contrasts strongly with the velar fricative /x/.
There is variation in the extent to which Musqueam speakers glottalize resonants. Phonetically, there are glottalized resonants and resonants preceded or followed by glottal stops, however, Suttles finds no instances of contrastive distribution among any of the three. He puts forth two explanations for these facts: that there are two sequences of phonemes, /Rʔ/ and /ʔR/, with overlapping allophones, or that there is a single phoneme that is realized in three distinct ways. In preferring the latter explanation, Suttles holds that there may be five glottalized resonant phonemes in the dialect, although Downriver speakers glottalize resonants very lightly, making them difficult to detect.
In most Upriver dialects, glottalized resonants do not exist, while in Island dialects, they are more sharply articulated. As is the case with many other phonological features, Downriver Halkomelem stands as a link between the other dialect areas, and it is possible that its speakers vary depending on Island or Upriver influence. Other differences between dialects include: Island and Downriver have both /n/ and /l/, while Upriver has merged these as /l/. Upriver Halkomelem lacks the post-vocalic glottal stops of the other two dialects, and shows compensatory lengthening in that environment. Additionally, Upriver dialects have greater pitch differences, and some words are differentiated by pitch alone.
Stress and pitch
Based on Suttles' recordings of several speakers of the Downriver dialect, stress in Halkomelem consists of an increase in intensity and an accompanying rise in pitch. The three levels of stress are primary, secondary, and weak. There is one vowel with primary stress in every full word, however, its occurrence is not completely predictable.In uninflected words with more than one vowel, the primary stress usually falls on the first vowel. There are exceptions to this general pattern. As shown by the preceding example, if the word contains both a full vowel and one or more schwas, the stress is placed on the full vowel. Again, there are exceptions to this pattern, such as in words with a final glottal stop that cannot be preceded by schwa.
Although minimal pairs contrasting stress are rare, they do exist in the language. The primary stress of a verb root consisting of a resonant, a schwa, and an obstruent followed by the suffix /-t/ "transitive" can fall on either the root or the suffix, allowing for minimal pairs such as mə̀kʼʷət "salvage it" and məkʼʷə́t "finish it all."
The secondary stress appears most often in words that are composed of a root that has retained its stress and a stressed suffix. It may be the case, however, that the secondary stress recorded by Suttles in words like cʼéwəθàmx is actually a falling pitch; this seems to be characteristic of the last stressed syllable of a phrase in the language. Additional analyses of the sentential intonation patterns are needed.
Phonotactics
All obstruents typically follow one another in sequences of up to four, although a sequence of five is also possible. There are no specific restrictions on the types of obstruent sequences that can occur. Plosives appearing in sequences are rearticulated, and sequences of /ss/ are common in the language.Resonants only appear adjacent to vowels. When these sounds occur in the middle of words, they are found in sequences of resonant-obstruent, resonant-resonant, and obstruent-resonant. An initial resonant is always followed by a vowel, and a final resonant must be preceded by one.
The laryngeals are more restricted than members of the other natural classes in Halkomelem. The glottal stop occurs only adjacent to a vowel, and, within words, it does not follow any obstruent except /s/. It can never occur in final position following a schwa. /h/ occurs only before vowels, following a resonant or one of the fricatives at morpheme boundaries, but never following other obstruents. It can appear between an unstressed and a stressed vowel, but it cannot occur between a stressed and an unstressed vowel.