| Wakashan | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
British Columbia, Canada |
| Genetic classification: |
One of the world's primary language families |
| Subdivisions: |
Southern Wakashan
|
| ISO 639-2 and 639-5: | wak |
 Pre-contact distribution of Wakashan languages |
|
Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
As typical of the Northwest Coast, Wakashan languages have large consonant inventories—the consonants often occurring in complex clusters.
Family division
Wakashan consists of 7 languages:
I. Northern Wakashan
- 1. Haisla (a.k.a. Xaʔislak’ala)
- 2. Kwak'wala (a.k.a. Kwakiutl, spoken by Southern Kwakiutl, Kwakwaka'wakw peoples)
- A. Heiltsuk-Oowekyala (a.k.a. Bella Bella)
II. Southern Wakashan
- 5. Makah
- 6. Nitinaht (a.k.a. Nitinat, Ditidaht, Southern Nootkan)
- 7. Nuu-chah-nulth (a.k.a. Nootka, Nutka, Aht, West Coast, T’aat’aaqsapa)
Further reading
- Liedtke, Stefan. Wakashan, Salishan, Penutian and Wider Connections Cognate Sets. Linguistic data on diskette series, no. 09. München: Lincom Europa, 1995. ISBN 3929075245
- William H. Jacobsen Jr. (1979): "Wakashan Comparative Studies" in The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment, Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.), Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Fortescue, Michael (2007). Comparative Wakashan Dictionary. Lincom Europa. ISBN 3895867241
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