Salishan languages
The
Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Pacific Northwest. They are characterised by agglutinativity and astonishing consonant clusters — for instance the Nuxálk word
xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓, meaning "he had had a bunchberry plant", has thirteen obstruent consonants in a row with no vowels. The Salishan languages are a geographically continuous block, with the exception of the Nuxálk, in the Central Coast of British Columbia, and the extinct Tillamook language, to the south on the coast of Oregon. The terms
Salish and
Salishan are used interchangeably by linguists and anthropologists studying Salishan but this is confusing in regular English usage, because the name
Salish or
Selisch is the endonym of the Flathead Nation. Linguists later applied the name to related languages in the Pacific Northwest. Many of the peoples do not have self-designations in their languages; they frequently have specific names for local dialects, as the local group was more important culturally than larger tribal relations. All Salishan languages are extinct or endangered—some extremely so, with only three or four speakers left.