"1 speaker of Southern Tsimshian"?

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"1 speaker of Southern Tsimshian"?

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Sun, 2023-01-15 01:43
Regarding: 
Population
State
Closed
ISO 639-3: 
tsi

What's our source? This post says that the last speaker died in 2013: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/1t5l5m/an_amazing_woman_ha...

(of course it's Reddit, so probably not reliable per se, but worth double checking)

Editorial Action

We will update the information on the number of speakers of the Southern Tsimshian dialect of Tsimshian [tsi], which is now 0 (zero), the last speaker having died in 2013, to be included in the next edition of the Ethnologue.

Comments

Chuck Fennig, Fri, 2023-01-20 13:34

Dear Antoine,

It is true that there is only one speaker of Southern Tsimshian, which is a dialect of Tsimshian [tsi] (https://www.ethnologue.com/language/tsi). The rest of the Tsimshian speak the other dialect, Coastal Tsimshian.

Best wishes,

Chuck Fennig
Managing Editor, Ethnologue

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Fri, 2023-01-20 14:06

Yes but is this speaker still alive as of 2023?

Chuck Fennig, Fri, 2023-01-27 16:23

You are right, Antoine.

I found reference to this last speaker of Southern Tsimshian in other, more reliable sources:

https://www.firstvoices.com/explore/FV/sections/Data/Tsimshianic/Sg%C3%B...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Tsimshian_dialect
https://www.sealaskaheritage.org/node/1352

So, I will update our information on the Southern Tsimshian dialect or Tsimshian [tsi] for the next edition.

Thanks.

Chuck

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