Lillooet language
language
Lillooet (; Lillooet: St̓át̓imcets / Sƛ̓aƛ̓imxǝc, [ˈʃt͡ɬʼæt͡ɬʼjəmxət͡ʃ]), also Lilʼwat, is a Salishan language of the Interior branch spoken by the Stʼatʼimc in southern British Columbia, Canada, around the middle Fraser and Lillooet Rivers. The language of the Lower Lillooet people uses the name Ucwalmícwts, because St̓át̓imcets means "the language of the people of Sat̓", i.e. the Upper Lillooet of the Fraser River.
Lillooet is a critically endangered language with around 120 fluent speakers and 393 semi-speakers. In 2022, there was a reported 1092 people learning the language.
Regional varieties
Lillooet has two main dialects:
Upper/Northern Lillooet (a.k.a. St̓át̓imcets, Fountain)
Lower/Southern Lillooet (a.k.a. Lil̓wat7úlmec, Mount Currie)
Upper Lillooet is spoken around Fountain, Pavilion, Lillooet, and neighboring areas. Lower Lillooet is spoken around Mount Currie and neighboring areas. An additional subdialect called "Skookumchuck" is spoken within the Lower Lilooet dialect area, but there is no information available in van Eijk (1981, 1997).
“Lillooet language” enters the record as language. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lillooet and language can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q34154. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2022, 1092, 1981 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lillooet language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.