Okanagan language
| Okanagan | |
|---|---|
| Colville | |
| n̓səl̓xcin | |
| Native to | Canada, United States |
| Region | Southern Interior of British Columbia, Central-northern State of Washington |
| Ethnicity | Okanagan, Colville, Lakes, Methow |
|
Native speakers
|
600 (2007–2014) 2,000 L2 speakers (2007) figure for US perhaps exaggerated |
|
salishan
|
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| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | okan1243 |
Okanagan, or Colville-Okanagan, is a Salish language which arose among the indigenous peoples of the southern Interior Plateau region based primarily in the Okanagan River Basin and the Columbia River Basin in pre-colonial times in Canada and the United States. Following British, American, and Canadian colonization during the 1800s and the subsequent repression of all Salishan languages, the use of Colville-Okanagan declined drastically.
Colville-Okanagan is highly endangered and is rarely learned as either a first or second language. There are about 150 deeply fluent speakers of Colville-Okanagan Salish, the majority of whom live in British Columbia. The language is currently moribund and has no deeply fluent speakers younger than 50 years of age. Colville-Okanagan is the second most spoken Salish language after Shuswap.
Historically, Colville-Okanagan originated from a language which was spoken in the Columbia River Basin and is now termed Proto Southern Interior Salish. As a result of the initial expansion of Colville-Okanagan prior to European contact, the language developed three separate dialects: Colville, Okanagan, and Lakes. There is a low degree of dialectic divergence in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Variation is primarily confined to pronunciation.
The vast majority of Colville-Okanagan words are from Proto-Salish or Proto-Interior Salish. A number of Colville-Okanagan words are shared with or borrowed from the neighboring Salish, Sahaptian, and Kutenai languages. More recent word borrowings are from English and French. Colville-Okanagan was an exclusively oral form of communication until the late 19th century when priests and linguists began transcribing the language for word lists, dictionaries, grammars, and translations. Colville-Okanagan is currently written in Latin script using the American Phonetic Alphabet.
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Wikipedia