St̓át̓imcets en · PROPN
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from Lillooet St̓át̓imcets.
Meanings
-
Synonym of Lillooet (language).
Lorna Williams, the chair of the First Peoples’ Cultural Council, created the writing system of her language, St̓át̓imcets, in 1973, by changing the Roman script to represent her language’s sounds. When the writing system was complete, she sent the details to a man in Hawaii, who modified an electric typewriter so that the language could be typed. The process was painstaking, and it marked a breathtaking technological leap: in the span of two years, St̓át̓imcets went from a language of the tongue to one of the IBM Selectric.
2013 June 12, William Brennan, “A Lifeline for Endangered Languages”, in The New Yorker:Andrew thought of her father, Chief Leonard Andrew, who was seven when he was forcibly taken to the school from his family home near Mount Currie, B.C. Fellow students mocked him on his first day for knowing only Ucwalmicwts, a dialect of St̓át̓imcets.
2021 June 11, Rhianna Schmunk, “Catching tears”, in CBC News: