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This Indigenous languages of the Americas-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Lushootseed (also xʷəlšucid, dxʷləšúcid, Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish, Skagit-Nisqually) is the language or dialect continuum of several Salish Native American groups of modern-day Washington state. Lushootseed is a member of Coast Salish, one of the two main divisions of the Salishan language group.
Lushootseed, like its neighbour Twana, is in the Southern Coast Salish subgroup of the Salishan family of languages. The language was spoken by many Puget Sound region peoples, including the Duwamish, Steilacoom, Suquamish, Squaxin Island Tribe, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, and Puyallup in the south and the Snohomish, Stillaguamish, Skagit, and Swinomish in the north.
The language is noteworthy for its lack of nasal consonants, especially as it, like other Northwest Coast languages, contains a very large number of consonants.
Ethnologue reports that there are only 60 fluent speakers of Lushootseed, evenly divided between the northern and southern dialects.[1] On the other hand, the Ethnologue's list of United States languages also lists, alongside Lushootseed's 60 speakers, 100 speakers for Skagit, 107 for Southern Puget Sound Salish, and 10 for Snohomish (a dialect on the boundary between the northern and southern varieties).[2]
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Lushootseed consists of two dialect groups which can be further divided into subdialects:
The division into Northern and Southern groups is based on vocabulary and stress patterns. More accurately, the dialects form a cline.
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