Upper Chehalis
q̓ʷay̓áyiɬq̓
Native to	United States
Region	south ofOlympic Peninsula,Washington
Ethnicity	Upper Chehalis people
Extinct	2001[1]
Language family	Salishan Coast Tsamosan Inland Upper Chehalis
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cjh
Glottolog	uppe1439
Upper Chehalis is classified as Extinct by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.[2]

Upper Chehalis (/ʃəˈheɪlɪs/ ^ⓘshə-HAY-liss; Upper Chehalis:q̓ʷay̓áyiɬq̓)^[3] is aTsamosan language historically spoken by theSatsop andUpper Chehalis people in westernWashington state.

Upper Chehalis is within theTsamosan branch of theSalishan language family.^[4][5] Within the Tsamosan languages, Upper Chehalis is within the Inland branch, alongsideCowlitz. Despite its name, it is more closely related to Cowlitz thanLower Chehalis, which is within the Maritime branch alongsideQuinault.^[4]

TheProto-Salish language likely originated north on theSalish Sea, near the mouth of the Fraser River. The ancestors of the speakers of the Tsamosan branch likely branched off around the same time as the Interior Salishan languages branched off, settling south ofPuget Sound, eventually occupying as far as the Pacific Coast. These speakers were the ancestors of the Tsamosan languages today. Before they reached the coast, another branch headed further south and became the ancestors of theTillamook language on theOregon Coast.^[6]

The language was originally spoken on theChehalis River in southwestern Washington, from aroundElma upriver toRainbow Falls. In Upper Chehalis, the language and people are calledq̓ʷay̓áyiɬq̓, derived from the name for Mud Bay,q̓ʷayáiɬ, suggesting that it was probably at one point also spoken alongMud Bay on Puget Sound.^[7] The language was spoken by theSatsop on theSatsop River and the five aboriginal bands of Upper Chehalis on the Chehalis River: thesq̓ʷay̓áyiɬq̓ on theBlack River and Mud Bay, thesɬačáw̓am̓š aroundOakville, theɬmə́šluws aroundTenino, theʔílawiqs aroundChehalis, and thec̓ax̣ʷásn̓ aroundPe-Ell andBoistfort.^[3]

By the 1970s, the language wasmoribund with only one competent speaker remaining.^[3] In 1991, an Upper Chehalis dictionary was published by linguistM. Dale Kinkade. Most of the material in the language was compiled from two primary sources in the 1960s and 1970s: Silas Heck and Lillian Young, two native speakers living on the Chehalis Reservation. Other secondary sources were used, including other Chehalis people living on the reservation and in nearby communities who knew some of the language, as well as tapes made in the 1950s byLeon Metcalf and other collected notes on vocabulary from a variety of sources.^[8]

The Upper Chehalis language uses a variation of theAmericanist phonetic notation, itself a variant of theInternational Phonetic Alphabet.^[10]

In Upper Chehalis, long vowels and sequences of vowel-glottal stop are infree variation but are represented with a long vowel, marked with '·', such as 'a·' or 'e·'. Otherwise, vowel length is ignored in writing. Additionally, anepenthetic/ə/ is regularly added beforeresonants in consonant clusters and after initial resonants followed by consonants; this is not written either.^[10]

Stress is marked with an acute accent ◌́.^[11]

Upper Chehalis has three dialects: Satsop, Oakville Chehalis, and Tenino Chehalis. Because of the lack of data, the exact boundaries of these dialects cannot be determined. Kinkade supposed that Tenino was spoken upriver ofGrand Mound, and that of the five Upper Chehalis bands, thesɬačáw̓am̓š andsq̓ʷay̓áyiɬq̓ spoke Oakville Chehalis, while theɬmə́šluws,ʔílawiqs, andc̓ax̣ʷásn̓ spoke Tenino Chehalis. Kinkade himself coined the terms "Oakville Chehalis" and "Tenino Chehalis"; previously they had been called "Upper Chehalis 1" and "Upper Chehalis 2" byFranz Boas. The Tenino dialect had also been referred to as "Staktamish".^[3]

The distinguishing feature between Tenino Chehalis and Oakville Chehalis is the phonemes [tʃ] [tʃʼ] and [ʃ] in Oakville and [k] [kʼ] and [x] in Tenino. The Tenino dialect is thus connected to the neighboring Cowlitz language, which also uses [k] [kʼ] and [x].^[3]

The Satsop dialect was originally spoken by theSatsop people. Although they spoke Upper Chehalis, they were more closely affiliated with theLower Chehalis groups downriver. For this reason, Satsop contains many vocabulary items from the Lower Chehalis language.^[3]

• Thompson, Lawrence C. (1979). "Salishan and the Northwest". In Campbell, Lyle; Mithun, Marianne (eds.).The Native Languages of America: Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin:University of Texas Press. pp. 692–765.doi:10.7560/746244.ISBN 0-292-74624-5.LCCN 79-65784.
• Thompson, Lawrence C.;Kinkade, M. Dale (1990). "Languages".Northwest Coast. Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 7. Smithsonian Institution. pp. 485–502.ISBN 0-16-020390-2.
• Kinkade, M. Dale (1991).Upper Chehalis Dictionary. Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 7. Missoula:University of Montana.ISBN 1-879763-07-9.LCCN 91-65372.

• Upper Chehalis (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)
• Upper Chehalis atEthnologue

• Coast Salish languages
• Languages extinct in the 2000s
• Languages of Washington (state)
• Salishan languages
• Tsamosan languages

• Pages using the Phonos extension
• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Upper Chehalis-language text
• Pages including recorded pronunciations
• Pages with plain IPA