Gitksanimx̱/Gitx̱sanimx̱/Gitx̱senimx̱ (Gitksan)

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The Gitksan language is spoken in north-western British Columbia, along the mid Skeena River Valley and surrounding lands. It is a member of the Tsimshian language family, most closely related to Nisg̱a’a – the two are often considered by linguists to be dialects of a combined Nass-Gitksan language; however the two are politically separate.

There are three major dialects of the language, reflected in the variants of the language name: Gitksanimx̱ in the Gitanmaax area, Gitx̱sanimx̱ in the east, and Gitx̱senimx̱ in the west part of the First Nations territory.

Note: There are several Roman Orthography conventionss on this site that may require further explanation. On the charts below, there is lots of phonetic terminology that may not be familiar to everyone.

The Canadian Census counts 1,570 Gitksan speakers in 2006, up from from 1,325 in 2001. According to Howe and Cook, there are 900.

Community Names:

Not available yet.

Consonants

	bilabial	alveolar	alveolar affricate	lateral	palatal	velar	rounded velar	uvular	glottal
voiced stop	b	d	j			g	gw	g̱	’
voiceless stop	p	t	ts			k	kw	ḵ
ejective stop	p’	tl	ts’	tl’		k’	kw’	ḵ’
voiceless fricative			s	hl		x	xw	x̱	h
resonant	m	n		l	y		w
glottalised resonant	’m	’n		’l	’y		’w

Vowels

	front	central	back
high	i - ii		u - uu
mid	e - ee		o
low		a - aa

Notes

Long vowels are written double. Although written with one letter, ‹o› is always long.

Last Update: February 23, 2008