Saanich
SENĆOŦEN
Pronunciation	[sənˈt͡ʃas̪ən]
Native to	Canada,United States
Region	British Columbia,Washington
Ethnicity	Saanich people
Native speakers	ca. 5 (2014)[1]
Language family	Salishan Coast Central Salishan North Straits Saanich
Writing system	SENĆOŦEN SometimesNAPA
Official status
Official language in	Pauquachin Tsawout Tsartlip Tseycum
Language codes
ISO 639-3	str (under Straits Salish)
Glottolog	saan1246
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Saanich (Saanich:SENĆOŦENIPA:[sənˈt͡ʃas̪ən]) is thevariety ofNorth Straits Salish spoken by theSaanich people in thePacific Northwest ofNorth America. North Straits Salish is adialect continuum, the varieties of which are closely related to theKlallam language.

"TheW̱SÁNEĆ School Board, together with theFirstVoices program for revitalizing Aboriginal languages, is working to teach a new generation to speakSENĆOŦEN" at the ȽÁU¸WELṈEW̱ Tribal School.^[5][6] The first Grade 12 class is scheduled to graduate in June 2026.^[7]

A Saanich texting app was released in 2012.^[8] A SENĆOŦENiPhone app was released in October 2011.^[9] An online dictionary, phrasebook, and language learning portal is available at theFirst Voices SENĆOŦEN Community Portal.^[10]

Saanich has no rounded vowels in native vocabulary. As in many languages, vowels are strongly affected by uvular consonants.

The following table includes all the sounds found in the North Straits dialects. No one dialect includes them all. Plosives are not aspirated, but are not voiced either. Ejectives have weak glottalization.

According to Montler (1986), the dorsals/q,χ,ɴ/, as well as their labialized and ejective (glottalized) counterparts, are realized more fronted as post-velars[k̠,x̠,ŋ̠];^[viii] the velars likewise are articulated as pre-velar[k̟,x̟].^[ix] However, later sources do not maintain this distinction, and simply use velar and uvular.^[13]

Saanich stress is phonemic. Each full word has one stressed syllable, either in the root or in a suffix, the position of which is lexically determined. "Secondary stress" is sometimes described, but this is merely a way of distinguishing lexicalschwas (with "secondary stress", like all other vowels in a word) fromepenthetic schwas ("unstressed").

The Saanich orthography was created by Dave Elliott in 1978, by using a typewriter to combine Latin characters with other marks to create new characters.^[14] It is aunicase alphabet, using onlyuppercase letters with the single exception of a lower-cases for the third person possessive suffix.^[15]

Theglottal stop/ʔ/ is not always indicated, but may be written with a spacingcedilla:⟨¸⟩ or less formally with acomma:⟨,⟩. When they are distinguished, the glottalized resonants are written⟨L¸⟩/lˀ/,⟨M¸⟩/mˀ/,⟨N¸⟩/nˀ/,⟨Ṉ¸⟩/ɴˀ/,⟨U¸⟩/əwˀ/,⟨Y¸⟩/jˀ/, or likewise with a comma. The comma was the original orthography, but caused problems with text searches and the like; Saanich dictionaries, spell-check and increasingly common usage have switched to the cedilla, and in 2025 Unicode defined the spacing cedilla as a letter to prevent word breaks, another problem with the comma.

The vowel/e/ is usually written⟨Á⟩, unless it occurs next to a uvular consonant (/qqʷqʼqʷʼχχʷɴɴʷ/), in which case it is written⟨A⟩.

/VRˀ/ often surfaces as[VʔR] when stressed, and this may be reflected in the orthography. For instance,/ʔeʔél̕kʷəɴ/ is spelledÁ¸Á¸LȻEṈ rather than phonemic *Á¸ÁL¸ȻEṈ in the Saanich dictionary, and/ʔan̕x̣sət/ isO¸NXSET rather than *ON¸XSET.^[16]

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

In 2004, four letters from the Saanich alphabet were added to the Unicode standard,^[17] and the barred K was accepted in 2024.^[18]In 2025, the properties of the spacing cedilla were changed to accommodate Saanich.^[19]

In Saanich,metathesis is used as a grammatical device to indicate "actual"aspect. The actual aspect is most commonly translated into English using thebe + -ing progressive construction. It is formed from the “nonactual” verb form through a CV → VC metathesis process, in which the consonant and vowel switch positions.

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(May 2008)

• Bill, Adriane; Cayou, Roxanne; Jim, Jacquelin (2003),NEȾE NEḰȺ SḴELÁLṈEW̱ [One Green Tree], Victoria, B.C.: First Peoples' Cultural Foundation & ȽÁU¸WELṈEW̱ Tribal School,ISBN 1-4120-0626-0
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999).The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk);ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Montler, Timothy (1986),"An Outline of the Morphology and Phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish",Occasional Papers in Linguistics (4), Missoula, MT: University of Montana Linguistics Laboratory (Web version of the author's PhD dissertation, University of Hawaiʻi).
• Montler, Timothy. (1996). Languages and Dialects in Straits Salishan.Proceedings of the International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages,31, 249–256.
• Montler, Timothy. (1999). Language and Dialect Variation in Straits Salishan.Anthropological Linguistics,41 (4), 462–502.
• Montler, Timothy. (2018).SENĆOŦEN: A Dictionary of the Saanich Language. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
• Thompson, Laurence; Thompson, M. Terry; & Efrat, Barbara. (1974). Some Phonological Developments in Straits Salish.International Journal of American Linguistics,40, 182–196.
• YELḰÁTȾE [Claxton, Earl, Sr.]; & STOLȻEȽ [Elliot, John, Sr.]. (1994).Reef Net Technology of the Saltwater People. Brentwood Bay, B.C.: Saanich Indian School Board.

• Timothy Montler's site
  • An Outline of the Morphology and Phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish (1986)
  • Phonology
  • Morphology
  • Sample text
  • How to pronounce SENĆOŦEN
  • Saanich Classified Word List (1991)
• https://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/saanich-verbs/
• Saanich Indian School Board
• SENĆOŦEN (Saanich, Northern Straits Salish)(Chris Harvey's Native Language, Font & Keyboard)
• SENĆOŦEN Welcome pageArchived 2017-07-31 at theWayback Machine (First Voices)
• W̱SÁNEĆ History & Territory with map.

• North Straits Salish languages
• Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast
• First Nations languages in Canada

• Pages with plain IPA
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles containing Straits Salish-language text
• ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue
• Pages with Straits Salish IPA
• Scripts with ISO 15924 four-letter codes
• Articles to be expanded from May 2008
• All articles to be expanded