Klallam, also known as Clallam, Ns'Klallam or S'klallam (endonym: , ), is a Straits Salishan language historically spoken by the Klallam people at Beecher Bay on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. The last native speaker of Klallam as a first language died in 2014, but there is a growing group of speakers of Klallam as a second language.
Klallam is closely related to the Northern Straits Salish dialects, Sooke, Lekwungen, Saanich, Lummi, and Samish but the languages are not mutually intelligible. There were several dialects of Klallam, including Elwha Klallam, Becher Bay Klallam, Jamestown S'Klallam and Little Boston S'Klallam.
Use and revitalization efforts
The first Klallam dictionary was published in 2012. Port Angeles High School, in Port Angeles, Washington, offers Klallam classes, taught as a heritage language "to meet graduation and college entrance requirements". Beginning fall 2020, the Klallam language has been taught at Peninsula College in Port Angeles.
The last native speaker of Klallam as a first language was Hazel Sampson of Port Angeles, who died on February 4, 2014, at the age of 103. Hazel Sampson had worked along with brother Ed Sampson (d. 1995), Tom Charles (d. 1999), Bea Charles (d. 2009) and Adeline Smith (d. 2013), other native speakers of Klallam, and with language teacher Jamie Valadez and linguist Timothy Montler from 1992 to compile the Klallam Dictionary. In 2020, Donald Sullivan, a member of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, installed street signs in Klallam alongside existing English ones in Little Boston.
Phonology
Vowels
Klallam has four phonemic vowels:
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- /i/ has allophones [e, ɛ] when stressed before /ʔ/, and for some speakers also before /j/, /jˀ/, /ɴ/, or /ɴˀ/. Similarly, a stressed /u/ becomes [o] before /ʔ/, and for some, also before /j/ or /jˀ/ (but not before /w/ or /wˀ/). The former is indicated in the traditional orthography, but the latter is not.
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- Glottalized sonorants , , , , are realized either
:# with creaky voice: , , , , ,
:# as decomposed glottal stop + sonorant: , , , , , or
:# as decomposed sonorant + glottal stop: , , , ,
- The alveolar affricate contrasts with a sequence of stop + fricative . The same goes for other affricates.
- Doubled non-glottal stops and affricates are pronounced as two separate sounds, but doubled sonorants, /ʔ/, and fricatives are geminated.
Syllable structure
In Klallam, strings of consonants are acceptable both at the beginning and ends of syllables. In the onset, consonant clusters are rather unstructured, so words like ɬq̕čšɬšáʔ "fifty" can exist without problem. Similarly, codas can contain similar clusters of consonants, as in sx̣áʔəstxʷ "to dislike something" (wherein the unstressed schwa is dropped, creating a cluster).
Stress
Stress in Klallam defines the quality of the vowel in any given syllable and can occur only once in a word. Unstressed vowels are often reduced to schwa, which is indicated in the orthography. In turn, unstressed schwas are deleted.
Stress often falls on the penultimate syllable; however, some affixes attract stress, and some words do not follow this pattern. Additionally, not all words can have stress.