Talk:Shuswap language

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 31 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): PianoMusic-J.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Genetic Affiliation
I cut out the discussion of further relations of Salishan, for two reasons. First, it isn't efficient to put that kind of thing into articles for individual languages. Discussion of remoter affiliations of Salishan belong at the Salishan level. Second, the bit that I cut was misleading in suggesting that the primary issue in evaluating whether Shuswap is part of Mosan or Amerind is the accuracy of Greenberg's Shuswap data. Although Greenberg's Amerind data is notoriously bad, the reason that his work is not generally accepted is that the method he uses, superficial lexical comparison, is not considered valid.Bill (talk) 17:00, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Map
The map that is given shows the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District, which is a government administrative unit. It does not correspond well to the traditional territory of the Secwépemc people. A (poor quality) map which does show this can be seen on the website of the Yinka Déné Language Institute, at 'www.ydli.org/images/bcnlmap.jpg'.Óghog (talk) 11:17, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There's a lot of mis-use of regional districts in Wikipedia and mis-applied use of their maps; wehtehr it's geographic regions or cultural regions (as in this case) they bear no relationship to the reality on the ground; but have been imposed as a way to break down bC by county-style regions as wiki-expediency; they're barely relevant to anything but building permits and septic field licenses but have taken on a life of their own in Wikipedia. This is one of the worst examples Iv'e seen and I'm gonna go through the other BC language pages to amke sure similar mis-uses aren't out there.  It's so irrelevant I'm giong to delete it from this page as a reminder that a proper map is needed (and re-add reqmap to this talkpage).  User:Qyd may have a good basemap, I'll see what I can dig up myself and freehand a boundary....I don't like the other language maps btw, the big continental ones with a grey background and a vague blotch; betrer to have regional closeups with some sense of terrain..."I'll be back"....Skookum1 (talk) 14:41, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

CJ borrowings?
Just wondering how many Chinook Jargon words there may in in Shuswap; only a few langauge pages get into that but it's always interesitng to see which; of course there's an issue with the French loanwords wehther they came in via the Jargon or directly from French; there's also local-native languages words that became part of standard CJ in the region, like the St'at'imcets swa'wa for cougar (instead of or as well as hyas pusspuss). Also I note St'at'imcets and Secwepemctsin are somehwat mutually interintelligible, not sure about Nlakapmuctsin...Okanagan is another step away but I gather the Nicola dialect of Thompson differs from the main, although I'd only be guessing to suggest because of teh long contact/intermingling between the two peoples in that area, i.e. you'd think Spaxomin and Sce'exmx might have words in common by now, and/or Similkameen. I think it was teh Nuxalk language page that had a table including CJ borrowings; one out there did....anyway between that and relationships with neighbouring langauges that would be a nice addition to teh article, especially for lay readers for whom teh phonological and syntactical/grammatical arguments are rather dry....Skookum1 (talk) 18:45, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I get your point about CJ borrowings being of interest. I don't know of any published material on this, which is not to say there isn't any. I have browsed the dictionary section of Kuipers (1974) book. In a small minority of dictionary entries, he gives related words in other Salishan languages. He also in some cases points out English and French loan words, some of which may also be in Chinook Jargon. My knowledge of CJ is tiny, but I did notice one possibly relevant word. The word for 'ocean' is polcúq° [pɔːlˈtʃɔqʷ], which Kuipers comments is probably a borrowing because it doesn't fit the normal Shuswap pattern. The second syllable [tʃɔqʷ] may be related to CJ chuck [tʃʌk] 'water'. If there is a relationship here, it would be an original finding -- not suitable for Wikipedia.Óghog (talk) 16:23, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hm, I'm sure it is....and likewise the French/English loanwords, but again it's a question of if they were introduced via CJ or directly from the native languages of the fur traders in the area; in way because of the native of regional versions of CJ they're both. But any idea what the "pol-" component of "polechuck" (which is how I'd anglicize that) might mean, or where it might come from?Skookum1 (talk) 16:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * BTW modern scholarship tends to be very deprecatory towards CJ, and some indigenous-language scholars and activists treat it as a "dirty little secret", and/or as something which was so widespread in use it was even more a threat to indigenous-language survival than English was; so they don't study it, don't like to talk about it, or when they do only in negative terms; lots of bands have tapes and tapes of tehir elders speaking it; they don't want them studied, however....or admit that their languages might contain words from it....if the borrowings from other Salishan languages are from Chehalis, if any, you can be sure that's via CJ though.....again original research...makes me wonder if these kinds of things might not be worht starting a "research" division of wikiversity for, though....Skookum1 (talk) 16:56, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

About alleviating the dryness of the grammar on this page, I have some ideas, which I'll work on as I can. However, I'm not sure I'm a good judge, since I really do like grammar. About the origin 'pole' of 'polechuck', I really don't have any ideas. That is the syllable which gives the word its non-Shuswap form. The 'chuck' syllable is perfectly consistant with Shuswap phonology, even if it isn't Shuswap in origin. About CJ loans in Shuswap, what criteria would you use to determine whether it came from CJ rather than directly from English or French? If a word is neither English, French nor Shuswap, such as 'chuck', then it seems clear. But otherwise? Are there phonological changes that could mark a word as CJ? --or instances of semantic shift that occurred in CJ, or change in semantic range?Óghog (talk) 21:01, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Notation / spelling of Shuswap words
Two different spelling systems are used on the Shuswap language page. The descriptive material uses one system, said to be 'generally used in literature on Shuswap'. No references are given to support this statement, but the spelling system is almost identical to that given in Kuipers (1974) in the Bibiography. The second system in the names 'Secwepemctsín' and 'Secwépmec' in the introductory paragraph, and on the stop sign in the illustration. The second system appears to be what is actually used by the Secwépemc themselves, for example on the website Secwepemc Cultural Education Society. The advantage of the first system is that it is well defined. I have seen no such complete description of the second system. Christopher Harvey, in his website Languagegeek.com: Secwepemctsín, attempt to define this second system. However, his text example comparing the two orthographies fails to show features of spelling used on Secwépemc websites. One such feature is that vocalic sonorants are written as 'e' plus consonant (or if word-initial, consonant plus 'e') on Secwépemc websites, whereas Harvey follows Kuipers in omitting the vowel. Another example of difference is 'k°əx°' (Kuipers spelling), 'kwecw' (Harvey spelling), and 'kuc' (Secwépemc websites spelling). In my opinion, ideally Secwepemctsín words ought to be spelled as the Secwépemc spell them. Does anyone know how to do this?

The words 'Secwépemc' and 'Secwepemctsín' (spelled by Kuipers 'səx°épmx' and 'səx°əpmxcín') have varient forms (according to Kuipers), 'Secwépmec' and 'Secwepmectsín'. This page shows some confusion of these forms without explaining the variation.Óghog (talk) 04:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I always spell it like this version 'Secwépemc' and 'Secwepemctsín'. I don't know if that's correct or anything, but it's the way I've always done it. (Neskiemanuel (talk) 05:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC))

The article currently refers to two systems, Kuipers and Bouchard. It states that the Bouchard system is the one usually used to write the language. However, the sections Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax are all based on Kuipers' The Shuswap Language (1974) and use the Kuipers system. I would suggest that Orthography be a separate section, and that writing systems be dealt with there. The Lillooet language article seems like a good model. --Moogsi (talk) 21:12, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Conflict Secwépemc lists the pronunciation as ʃəˈxʷɛpməx (as I often hear it pronounced) whereas this article ads an ə after the p (ʃəˈxʷɛpəməx). -- 129.242.129.238 (talk) 10:30, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Phonological Processes
The article contains a section called Phonological Processes. In this, it is stated that there is allophonic variation between glottalized versus non-glottalized versions of consonants, and allophonic variation between rounded and unrounded versions of consonants, but that Kuipers (1974) 'does not specify'. However, Kuipers did indeed go into some detail on these topics. Deglottalization of obstruents is dealt with in Section 1.7.3. Movable glottalization of sonorants, and changes in glottalization of sonorants in conjunction with morphemic change are dealt with in Section 5. The rounded/unrounded issue is dealt with in Section 1.7.1 and also in Section 6.Óghog (talk) 23:21, 18 November 2008 (UTC)