Oowekyala ,William C. Sturtevant, 1978. Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast 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. Its speakers consider it to be a distinct language from Heiltsuk.
Name The name of Oowekyala is derived from the root 'back, inland' and the suffix 'speech'. The same root is found in the name of the Wuikinuxv, with the suffix 'tribe'. An Anglicized form of this name, Oowekeeno, has also been used to designate the language, also spelled Oweekeno, Wikeno, Owikeno, Oweekano, and Awikenox.
Classification Oowekyala is one of the Wakashan languages, a language family distributed in western coastal British Columbia. It belongs to the Northern branch of the family, which includes related languages like Kwakʼwala, Haisla, and Heiltsuk. The latter is frequently considered a dialect of the same language as Oowekyala, but there are many phonological and grammatical differences between the two. For example, Heiltsuk is a tonal language, while Oowekyala is not. Nonetheless, they are mutually intelligible.
Phonology
Below, each sound is given the IPA and in the practical orthography designed by John C. Rath and used by the Wuikinuxv Nation. This orthography differs from the transcription system used by Howe (2000), which uses Americanist symbols.
Consonants
Oowekyala has 45 consonantal phonemes, as shown in the table below.
LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarUvularGlottalplainsib.lat.plainlab.plainlab.Plosive/Affricatevoiceless voiced Not Howe (2000:24). ejective Fricative Sonorantshort glottalic long
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 glot. short long glot. short long glot. Close Mid Written only in the sequences , and . Open Heiltsuk–Oowekyala is the only Wakashan language with glottalized vowels, which are extremely restricted and can only appear "as the first syllabic sonorant in a word".
Phonotactics
Oowekyala tolerates very large consonant clusters. Words can consist of obstruents alone, with no vowel and no other sonorant: 'powder', 'short (of a person)', 'fine dirt'. Because obstruent-only roots combine with obstruent-only lexical suffixes and enclitics, whole sentences can be built without a sonorant, as in 'the invisible one here-with-me will be short'. This property is also found in Nuxalk, an unrelated Salishan language spoken about 50 km to the northeast.
The two languages are analyzed differently, however. Bagemihl (1991) argues that obstruent-only strings in Nuxalk are never syllabified; Howe applies the same test to Oowekyala and reaches the opposite conclusion, as such strings do occur in reduplicants. Heiltsuk has the same clustering, but breaks it up with |epenthetic schwas after glottalized stops and affricates, where Oowekyala does not: Heiltsuk corresponds to Oowekyala 'fish hawk'. The two dialects also differ in prosody; besides Heiltsuk being tonal, Oowekyala has contrastive vowel and sonorant length, which Heiltsuk lacks.
References
Bibliography
Boas, Franz. (1928). Bella Bella texts. Columbia University contributions to anthropology (No. 5). Boas, Franz. (1932). Bella Bella tales. Memoirs of the American Folklore Society (No. 25). Hanuse, R., Sr.; Smith, H.; & Stevenson, D. (Eds.) (1983?). The Adjee and the Little Girl. Rivers Inlet, BC: Oowekyala Language Project. Hilton, Suzanne; & Rath, John C. (1982). Oowekeeno oral traditions. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. Howe, Darin. (1998). Aspects of Heiltsuk laryngeal phonology. Ms., University of British Columbia. Howe, Darin M. (2000). Oowekyala segmental phonology. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Ottawa). Johnson, S.; Smith, H.; & Stevenson, D. (1983?). What time is it? Rivers Inlet, BC: Oowekyala Language Project. Johnson, S.; Smith, H.; & Stevenson, D. (1983?). Fishing at Rivers Inlet. Rivers Inlet, BC: Oowekyala Language Project. Johnson, S.; Smith, H.; & Stevenson, D. (1983?). Qaquthanugva uikala. Rivers Inlet, BC: Oowekyala Language Project. Johnson, S.; Smith, H.; & Stevenson, D. (1983?). Sisa'kvimas. Rivers Inlet, BC: Oowekyala Language Project. Johnson, S.; Smith, H.; & Stevenson, D. (1983?). ’Katemxvs ’Wuik’ala. Rivers Inlet, BC: Oowekyala Language Project. Johnson, S.; Smith, H.; & Stevenson, D. (1984?). Oowekyala words. Rivers Inlet, BC: Oowekyala Language Project. Lincoln, Neville J.; & Rath, John C. (1980). North Wakashan comparative root list. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. Poser, William J. (2003). The status of documentation for British Columbia native languages. Yinka Dene Language Institute Technical Report (No. 2). Vanderhoof, British Columbia: Yinka Dene Language Institute. Rath, John C. (1981). A practical Heiltsuk-English dictionary. Canadian Ethnology Service, Mercury Series paper (No. 75). Ottawa: National Museum of Man. Stevenson, David. (1980). The Oowekeeno people: A cultural history. Ottawa, Ontario: National Museum of Man (now Hull, Quebec: Museum of Civilization). (Unpublished). Stevenson, David. (1982). The ceremonial names of the Oowekeeno people of Rivers Inlet. Ottawa, Ontario: National Museum of Man (now Hull, Quebec: Museum of Civilization). (Unpublished). Storie, Susanne. (Ed.). (1973). Oweekano Stories. (Special Collections: E99). Victoria: British Columbia Indian Advisory Committee. Windsor, Evelyn W. (1982). Oowekeeno oral traditions as told by the late chief Simon Walkus, Sr. Hilton, S.; & Rath, J. C. (Eds.). Mercury series (No. 84). Ottawa: National Museum of Man.
External links The Heiltsuk-Oweek'ala Language Bibliography of Materials on the Heiltsuk Language The Wakashan Languages map of Northwest Coast First Nations (including Oowekyala, shown as "Oowekeeno")