Vowels[]
Saanich has no rounded vowels in native vocabulary. As in many languages, vowels are strongly affected by post-velar consonants.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | ɔ |
| Low | æ | ɑ |
The rounded close high back vowel /u/ is found only in loanwords, such as CEPU (/kəˈpu/) "coat", from French.
/i/ is [ɪ] adjacent to a post-velar or labio-postvelar consonant, or preceding /ʔ/.
/e/ is [e̽]—rarely as low as [ɛ]—adjacent to a post-velar or labio-postvelar consonant or preceding /ʔ/. It is closer—almost [i]—next to a lateral, post-alveolar, or /w/.
/ɑ/ is [ɐ] before /j/. It is also affected by post-velars and /ʔ/.
/ə/ is generally mid central, but becomes [ɑ̽] adjacent to a postvelar or labio-postvelar, or a laryngeal obstruent, and especially between two such consonants, whether or not it is stressed. When unstressed, it is a close central [ɨ] following post-alveolars and before sonorants (including /ŋ/), and it is central rounded [ʉ] before the labialized obstruents.
Consonants[]
The following table includes all the sounds found in the North Straits dialects. No one dialect includes them all. Plosives are not aspirated, but are not voiced either. Ejectives have weak glottalization.
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Prevelar | Post-velar | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | plain | rounded | plain | rounded | |||||||
| Stop | voiced | b | d | |||||||||
| plain | p | t | (k̟) | k̟ʷ | k̠ | k̠ʷ | ʔ | |||||
| glottalized | pʼ | tʼ | k̟ʷʼ | k̠ʼ | k̠ʷʼ | |||||||
| Affricate | voiced | dz | dʒ | |||||||||
| plain | ts | tʃ | ||||||||||
| glottalized | ts̪ʼ | tsʼ | tɬʼ | tʃʼ | ||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s̪ | s | ɬ | ʃ | x̟ʷ | x̠ | x̠ʷ | h | |||
| voiced | z | ɮ | ʒ | |||||||||
| Nasal | plain | m | n | ŋ̠ | ||||||||
| glottalized | (mʼ) | (nʼ) | (ŋ̠ʼ) | |||||||||
| Approximant | plain | l | j | w | ||||||||
| glottalized | (lʼ) | (jʼ) | (wʼ) | |||||||||
The unrounded prevelar stop /k̟/ is found only in loanwords, as in CEPU (/k̟əˈpu/) above.
The dentals are often written ⟨θ⟩, ⟨tθʼ⟩, but this is inaccurate, as they are laminal sibilants, [s̻, ts̻], and are only rarely interdental. The alveolars /s, ts, tsʼ/, on the other hand, are apical, as are all alveolars, including the laterals. The post-velars are often written ⟨q⟩, ⟨χ⟩, etc., but are not actually uvular.
The phonemic status of the glottalized sonorants /mˀ nˀ ŋ̠ˀ lˀ jˀ wˀ/ is not agreed upon. Some linguists analyse them as unit phonemes, others as sequences of a plain sonorant and a glottal stop /ʔ/. They do not occur in word-initial position. They tend to [ʔC] following a stressed vowel, [Cʔ] preceding a stressed vowel, and creaky voiced sonorants elsewhere.
Stress[]
Saanich stress is phonemic. Each full word has one stressed syllable, either in the root or in a suffix, the position of which is lexically determined. "Secondary stress" is sometimes described, but this is merely a way of distinguishing lexical schwas (with "secondary stress", like all other vowels in a word) from epenthetic schwas ("unstressed").