Indigenous languages · recovered texts live

Sm'algyax — the Tsimshian Language

Sm'algyax — “the real language” — the voice of the Ts'msyen, the Tsimshian nations of the lower Skeena River and the north coast, and of Metlakatla across the line in Alaska.

Recovered texts are here to read. The people's own curriculum doorway is in preparation — in partnership with the Tsimshian nations' own speakers. The goal is the whole collection in Sm'algyax: every book to read and to hear, here and in the school. Nothing is published until they have guided and reviewed it.

The language

Sm'algyax is the best known of the Tsimshianic languages, with Nisga'a and Gitxsan as its close kin up the Nass and the Skeena. Its homeland is the lower Skeena and the coast and islands around what is now Prince Rupert: the nations of Lax Kw'alaams, Metlakatla, Gitxaała, Kitselas, Kitsumkalum, and Gitga'at — and, across the water in Alaska, New Metlakatla on Annette Island, where the Tsimshian people who followed William Duncan in 1887 made their second home.

Mission and residential schools cut deeply into the passing-on of Sm'algyax, and the fluent generation is now small. The nations' answer stands in their own institutions: the Ts'msyen Sm'algyax Language Authority, community schools where Sm'algyax is taught as an accredited subject — Wa̱p Sig̱atgyet, the “House of Building Strength,” in Prince Rupert among them — the Sm'algyax Living Legacy talking dictionary built with fluent speakers at the University of Northern British Columbia, and a public Sm'algya̱x archive on FirstVoices.

Their own teachers

Sm'algyax is taught under the authority of the Tsimshian nations themselves, through the Ts'msyen Sm'algyax Language Authority and the nations' own schools and education departments. The talking dictionary below is the speakers' own voices, recorded speaker by speaker and village by village.

Sm'algyax Living Legacy — the Talking Dictionary (University of Northern British Columbia) — fluent speakers' own recordings, the dictionary built by the Tsimshian community of speakers and learners

The writing

Today's Sm'algyax writing — with its underlined letters, a̱ and g̱ among them — is the nations' own orthography, taught in their own schools. The recovered witness below keeps the spelling Franz Boas printed in 1902, the scholarly notation of that day; the two writings are not the same. What is relearned here is read in the old spelling exactly as printed, and learned to write at the nations' house in the nations' spelling.

Recovered reading

One recovered book stands here: Tsimshian Texts (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 27, 1902) — the front matter entire, and the first myth entire: its Tsimshian text in 254 numbered interlinear lines with Boas's word-by-word gloss and his free translation, exactly as printed. One gloss on printed page 11 is not legible in the copy and stands marked, not filled. It is the people's own witness, recovered as a historical text — not a Sacred Name edition; the collection's own edition in this language awaits the Nisga'a / Tsimshian nations' speakers under the partnership. Read the front matter and the first myth of Tsimshian Texts (1902)

The myths go on: Text II, the Txä'msEm cycle, now stands complete on its own page — told by Philip and Moses, in Tsimshian with its interlinear gloss and free translation, exactly as Bulletin 27 printed it in 1902. Text I stands on the first Tsimshian Texts page; the remaining texts of the volume stand for continuation. Read Text II — "Txä'msEm" (1902)

The myths go on: Text III, the Txä'msEm cycle in its longest telling, now stands complete on its own page — told by Philip and Moses, in Tsimshian with its interlinear gloss and free translation, exactly as Bulletin 27 printed it in 1902. Text I stands on the first Tsimshian Texts page and Text II on its own page; the remaining texts of the volume stand for continuation. Read Text III — "Txä'msEm" (1902)

An open invitation

This door stands open by invitation. If you are a speaker, teacher, or language keeper of Sm'algyax, or you carry its authority, this programme asks to work with you — to be guided, corrected, and reviewed by the people whose language this is. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].

The first door is the Ts'msyen Sm'algyax Language Authority and the Tsimshian nations' own education departments.

To hear it

When Sm'algyax opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Tsimshian speakers. Until then this door is silent in Sm'algyax on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.

The other doors

One small advertisement stands at the bottom of this page — never inside the reading text. The words of the book stand more prominent than the advertisement.