Salishan

The Salishan languages (/ˈseɪlɪʃən/ SAY-lish-ən), also known as the Salish languages (/ˈseɪlɪʃ/ SAY-lish), are a family of languages spoken in the Pacific Northwest of North America, including the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. They are characterised by agglutinativity and syllabic consonants. For instance, the Nuxalk word clhp’xwlhtlhplhhskwts' ( Nuxalk pronunciation: [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]), meaning 'he had had [in his possession] a bunchberry plant', has twelve obstruent consonants in a row with no phonetic or phonemic vowels.

The Salishan languages are a geographically contiguous block, with the exception of the Nuxalk (Bella Coola), in the Central Coast of British Columbia, and the extinct Tillamook language, to the south on the central coast of Oregon.