Saanich (SENĆOŦEN)

Saanich is a member of the Salishan or Salish family of languages spoken
by about 20 people mainly on the Saanich Peninsula of Vancouver Island in
Canada, and also in Washington State in the USA. Efforts are currently being
made to preserve the language and to pass it on to Saanich children.

The Saanich alphabet was designed by Saanich elder Dave Eliot in the
1970s. He realized that without the lack of a standard written form of the
language might lead to it’s eventually extinction, so he set about devising
one, with help from a Victoria linguist. Previous spelling systems for Saanich
used a number of letters to represent some of the sounds, resulting in very
long, complicated words. Dave Eliot decided to design an alphabet that used
a single letter to represent each sound. His invention was adopted by the
Saanich Indian School Board in 1984.