Kwak'wala - Orthography

Orthography

Word lists and some documentation of Kwak'wala were created from the early period of contact with Europeans in the 18th century, but a systematic attempt to record the language did not occur before the work of Franz Boas in the late 19th and early 20th century. Over time, Boas developed a systematic orthography for documentation of Kwak'wala, which captured almost all of the important distinctions in the language (although some features, such as vowel length and stress, were not recorded systematically).

Although the Boasian orthography was able to capture almost all of the important features of Kwak'wala, it was difficult for Kwak'wala speakers to use: it was impossible to write with a standard typewriter due to its abundant use of special symbols, and it used some standard letters very differently than English orthography, which was familiar to many Kwakwaka'wakw. A practical orthography, developed by the Kwakwaka'wakw linguist David Grubb, became the standard system for writing Kwak'wala.

Practical writing of Kwak'wala today is typically done in the orthography promoted by the U'mista Cultural Society, which largely resembles the Grubb orthography. Variants of this orthography allow for easier computer typesetting. For example, instead of marking ejective consonants with an apostrophe printed above the consonant, the apostrophe may be printed as a separate character following the consonant. Linguistic works on Kwak'wala typically use an IPA or Americanist transcription.

The following table compares different orthographic representations of some Kwak'wala words.

(NB: g. in the Boasian transcription should be an underdotted g rather than a digraph. ḵ’, etc., in the U'mista transcription should be overstricken rather than written as digraphs.)