A group of preschoolers stand in a semi-circle clutching handfuls of fall leaves in red, orange, yellow and green.

Their small, cheerful voices sing “autumn leaves are falling down/falling down/falling down” to the tune of the well-known London Bridge is falling down nursery rhyme.

After singing the English version, teachers Peggy Plumstead McLeod and Jen McCrystal encourage the youngsters to sing again—in Hən’q’əminəm’.

It’s circle time at the Smuyuq’wa’ Lelum/Ladybug Lodge Early Childhood Development Centre at the Tsawwassen First Nation. Three times a week language coordinator Barb Joe joins the class to help incorporate Hən’q’əminəm’ words into their routine, such as colours, seasons, nursery rhymes and body parts.

On a brisk morning in late September they talk about the changing seasons. “Who’s got some green leaves?” asks McCrystal. “How do you say it Mrs. Barb? Cqway. Green.”

The children try their tongues at “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” in Hən’q’əminəm’, looking to their teachers for guidance. Their happy, if timid, natures are not dampened by the sounds that are often discouraging to adult non-speakers.

Says Joe, “They don’t mind sounds at the front of their mouth, or the glottal (stop) sound in the back of their throats.”

A lifelong hobby

In a language assessment conducted in 2007/2008 for the First Peoples Language Map of B.C., the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council found of 347 Tsawwassen First Nation members, 28 people were learning Hən’q’əminəm’, 20 people could understand or somewhat speak the language, and no one was fluent.

Hən’q’əminəm’ is a downriver dialect of Halkomelem, which encompasses three related dialects spoken by First Nations on Vancouver Island, by the mouth of the Fraser River, and the Stave River up to the Lower Fraser Canyon.

The languages and cultures of First Nations across Canada were suppressed and forced underground around the late 1800’s onward when Aboriginal children were taken from their families and made to live in residential schools. Among other abuses, children were punished if they spoke their language, and today First Nations are struggling with the challenge of reviving their dialects.

Joe says the last person who fluently spoke Hən’q’əminəm’and could break down the word structure was her grandmother, Sophia Jacobs. She passed away in 1991.

Joe herself began learning Hən’q’əminəm’ in the late 1980s and the early 90s through the University of B.C. When Joe first started she realized the need training in linguistics as well, and learned the International Phonetic Alphabet in order to be able to write words down.

The learning is ongoing, and she continues to take Tuesday evening linguistics courses through Simon Fraser University.

“People become disillusioned because it’s a lifelong hobby,” says Joe.

Tsawwassen First Nation health and social services manager Susan Miller says the place she sees the chance to encourage learning parts of the Hən’q’əminəm’ language is in the band’s longhouse.

Miller, who doesn’t speak Hən’q’əminəm’, says she’d like to see more opportunities for members to be engaged in learning the language through cultural activities.

Ceremonies at the longhouse are often performed in both English and Hən’q’əminəm’. Miller says it’s in this context she picks up words and phrases because she understands and is part of what’s happening.

Currently, Joe helps teach basic words to the preschoolers and also teaches a few interested Tsawwassen First Nation youth. But she says an immersion program is needed—for children and their parents—to bring the language back and she isn’t fluent enough to teach an immersion class.

“I need to be in immersion,” she says. “And a number of us would need to be in immersion to have a conversation.”

The place Tsawwassen

In neighbouring South Delta communities, residents know little if anything about the Tsawwassen First Nation language, the history behind the name Tsawwassen, or the proper pronunciation of the community in which they live.

Joe says Tsawwassen—Sc’əwaθən—is a an old place name that has seen many different spellings, due to the difficulty non-speakers of the Hən’q’əminəm’ language have pronouncing the word.

This goes for band family names as well as Tsawwassen. Joe says the unwillingness of government departments and church officials to write down Aboriginal family names without a Christian name resulted in poorly kept records.

“For every different person—government officials, priests—who tried to write it down, there’s a different spelling,” says Joe.

On the BC Vital Statistics web site the agency acknowledges Aboriginal names were recorded in various ways depending on how the person completing the registration form thought a name sounded. As a result, many names are now shown as “unknown.”

First Nations’ oral histories mean elders and linguists know Hən’q’əminəm’ words like Tsawwassen are thousands of years old.

People often say Tsawwassen with the “T” and leave out the first “s,” leave out the “T” and start with the “s,” or begin with the “Tse” sound. Joe says the proper pronunciation is “s-Tsoow-a-thun.”

Breaking down Sc’əwaθən, Joe says “s-Tsoow” means “beach,” and “a-thun” means “the edge of,” hence Tsawwassen First Nation being commonly known as the Land Facing the Sea.

One of the more recent pronunciations encouraged by the Tsawwassen First Nation, for about the last century, has been “Chewassen.”

In actuality, Joe says there are very few words with the “ch” sound in Hən’q’əminəm’, but she says it became easier to teach non-speakers to say Chewassen rather than “s-Tsoow-a-thun”—not just for ease of learning, but also so those living in neighbouring communities would understand where residents were referring to.

Imagine stepping on a bus and asking if it goes to “s-Tsoow-a-thun,” says Joe.

Saying the word, and many Hən’q’əminəm’ words, can be a challenging task to adults since there is not only a new alphabet, but new sounds as well. The youngsters Joe helps at the Ladybug Lodge preschool, however, are uninhibited.

Like the little ones, Joe hopes adults will be encouraged to learn more about Hən’q’əminəm’ and ask questions to help the language be revived with enthusiasm and respect.

reporter@southdeltaleader.com