Oowekyala facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Oowekyala |
|
|---|---|
| ’Wuik̓ala | |
| Region | Northern Central Coast Regional District, British Columbia, Canada |
| Ethnicity | Wuikinuxv people |
| Native speakers | 6 (2014, FPCC) |
| Language family |
Wakashan
|
Oowekyala also Ooweekeeno and ’Wuik̓ala in the language itself, is a dialect (or a sublanguage) of Heiltsuk-Oowekyala, a Northern Wakashan language spoken around Rivers Inlet and Owikeno Lake in the Central Coast region of the Canadian province of British Columbia, spoken by the Wuikinuxv, whose government is the Wuikinuxv Nation.
The name is also spelled Wuikala, Wuikenukv, Oweekeno, Wikeno, Owikeno, Oowekeeno, Oweekano, Awikenox, Oowek'yala, Oweek'ala.
Contents
Sounds
Consonants
The 45 consonants of Oowekyala:
| Labial | Alveolar | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | sibilant | plain | labial | plain | labial | ||||
| Plosive | voiced | |||||||||
| voiceless | ||||||||||
| ejective | ||||||||||
| Fricative | ||||||||||
| Sonorant | short | |||||||||
| long | ||||||||||
| glottalized | ||||||||||
Phonologically, affricates are treated as stops, and nasals and approximants are treated as sonorants. Additionally and are treated as sonorants.
Vowels
Oowekyala has phonemic short, long, and glottalized vowels.:
| Front | Central | Back | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | glottalized | short | long | glottalized | short | long | glottalized | |
| Close | |||||||||
| Mid | |||||||||
| Open | |||||||||
Syllables
Oowekyala, like Nuxálk (Bella Coola), allows long sequences of obstruents, as in the following 7-obstruent word:
- 'the invisible one here-with-me will be short' (Howe 2000: 5)
- kxlqsłcxʷ - you struck a match for me
