Kwakʼwala

Kwakʼwala (/kwɑːˈkwɑːlə/), or Kwak̓wala, previously known as Kwakiutl (/ˈkwɑːkjʊtəl/), is a Wakashan language spoken by about 450 Kwakwakaʼwakw people around Queen Charlotte Strait in Western Canada. It has shared considerable influence with other languages of the Pacific Northwest, especially those of the unrelated Salishan family. While Kwakʼwala is severely endangered, revitalization efforts are underway to preserve the language.

While Kwakʼwala had no written records until European contact, archeological and linguistic evidence shed light on its prehistory. Northern and Southern branches of the Wakashan language family split approximately 2,900 years ago. Northern Wakashan (or Kwakiutlan) speakers likely expanded outward from the north of Vancouver Island, displacing Salishan languages on the mainland of what is now British Columbia. Kwakʼwala was first written by missionaries during the colonization of the Pacific Northwest. As part of its policy of forced cultural assimilation of indigenous peoples, the Canadian government suppressed Kwakʼwala and outlawed its attendant culture through the late 19th to mid-20th centuries; elders and second-language learners are currently rebuilding its speaking population.

Kwakʼwala is morphologically complex, having many suffixes conveying distinct meanings such as mood, aspect, and person, with multiple of these meanings often existing in a single suffix. Kwakʼwala has suffixes marking the subject, object, and instrument within a phrase and spatial relationships including distance from and visibility to the speaker. These suffixes can trigger consonant mutation in the stem which they inflect. It is also phonologically complex, having a rich consonant inventory containing phonemes – being distinct sound units – uncommon in languages worldwide.