Kwak'wala (language)
Kwak'wala, also Kwakiutl, is an indigenous language spoken by the Kwakwaka'wakw in the north of Vancouver Island , on the adjacent islands and on the opposite mainland in Canada . It is one of the Wakash languages .
About 660 Kwakwaka'wakw speak the language, 165 of them fluently, and another 10.6% of the ethnic population learn it. The language is considered to be under threat as most speakers belong to the grandparent generation and children usually do not learn it as their mother tongue.
Numerous projects and a lively cultural community are actively working to revitalize the language. Kwak'wala can be learned through various on-site projects and online resources, as well as at the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Dialects
The different tribes of the Kwakwaka'wakw , which literally means “speakers of the Kwak'wala”, speak five different dialects: Kwak̓wala, 'Nak̓wala, G̱uc̓ala, T̓łat̓łasik̓wala and Liq'wala.
Phonology
Like most languages of the Pacific Northwest, Kwak'wala has a very large consonant inventory and a comparatively small inventory of vowels.
Consonants occur voiceless , voiced, and as ejectives . In addition, velars and uvulars show contrasting labialization .
The vowel inventory consists of / a /, / e /, / i /, / o /, / u / and / ə /. Some of the vowels also contrast in length.
| labial | Alveolar | Lateral | Palatal | Velar | Labio-Velar | Uvular | Labio-uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nasal | voiced | m | n | |||||||
| glottalized | m ' | n ' | ||||||||
| Plosive | unvoiced | p | t | k | k w | q | q w | ʔ | ||
| voiced | b | d | G | g w | ɢ | ɢ w | ||||
| Ejective | p ' | t ' | k ' | k ' w | q ' | q ' w | ||||
| Fricative | unvoiced | s | ɬ | x | x w | χ | χ w | H | ||
| Affricates | unvoiced | ts | tɬ | |||||||
| voiced | dz | dɬ | ||||||||
| Ejective | t's | t'ɬ | ||||||||
| Approximant | voiced | l | j | w | ||||||
| glottalized | l ' | j ' | w ' |
Morphosyntax
Kwak'wala is a polysynthetic language. A limited set of stems can be combined with numerous suffixes to form a large and precise vocabulary. In extreme cases, a single word consisting of numerous morphemes can form a whole sentence.
Another central feature of the morphology is the reduplication . For distributive , plural , diminutive and to express “too much” morphemes are partially reduplicated. Total reduplication occurs when repetition is printed.
orthography
The first word lists of the Kwak'wala were drawn up during early contact with Europeans in the 18th century. However, it was only Franz Boas who systematically studied the language with the help of George Hunt in the late 19th century and developed a first alphabet and orthography . However, since this was comparatively complicated and impossible to reproduce on a typewriter due to numerous special symbols, David Grubb developed a new spelling in 1977. The alphabet of the U'mista Cultural Society, which is most widespread and used for teaching today, deviates from Grubb's considerations in only a few cases. For example, Grubb uses a "7" for glottal closure , while U'mista uses an apostrophe (') for any glottal sound . Another example is the Schwa / ə /, which is written by Grubb as "e" and by U'mista as the underlined "a".
The Liq'wala dialect has its own orthography due to its different sound inventory.
Revitalization efforts
The assimilation policies of the Canadian government in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries actively decimated the Kwak'wala speakers. In the residential schools that First Nations children were forced to attend , the use of their native languages was forbidden and severely punished. The traumatic experiences shape many survivors in their relationship to language to this day and are often the reason why the language was given up and not passed on to the next generation.
Today attempts are being made to spread the language again with the help of local cultural centers. The language is taught in the communities and used at cultural festivals, and the T'lisalagi'lakw School in Alert Bay integrates it into the everyday life of primary school children. Both the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver offer language courses and training programs for prospective teachers.
The FirstVoices platform has an online dictionary, phrase book, stories and songs to help you learn the language. In 2011, a language learning app was released.
literature
Boas, Franz (1900): Sketch of the Kwakiutl language. American Anthropologist, 2 (4): 708-721.
Grubb, David (1977): A Practical Writing System and Short Dictionary of Kwak'wala (Kwakiutl). Ottawa: National Museum of Man.
Kalmar, Michele (2003): Patterns of Reduplication in Kwak'wala. Master's thesis, The University of British Columbia.