Thompson language
Interior Salishan language
Thompson (endonym: nɬeʔkepmxcín) – also known as Nlakaʼpamuctsin, Nlakaʼpamux, or Nthlakampx – is an Interior Salishan language spoken by the Nlakaʼpamux people (also known as the Thompson people). It is spoken in the Fraser Canyon, Thompson Canyon, and Nicola Country of the Canadian province of British Columbia and was formerly spoken in the North Cascades region of Whatcom and Chelan counties of Washington State in the United States. A dialect distinctive to the Nicola Valley is called Scwʼexmx, which is the name of the subgroup of the Nlakaʼpamux who live there.
Phonology
Thompson is a consonant-heavy language. The consonants can be divided into two subgroups: obstruents (oral occlusives & voiceless continuants), which restrict airflow, and sonorants (nasal occlusives & voiced and glottalic continuants), which do not. The sonorants are often syllabic consonants, which can form syllables on their own without vowels.
Consonants
Vowels
Stress is transcribed with an acute accent, such as ⟨á⟩.
Writing systems
One of the writing systems used for Thompson uses the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA) writing system.
The above consonant chart is based on the one found in "The Thompson Language" by Laurence C. Thompson & M. Terry Thompson.
Morphology and syntax
Researchers working in the Generative tradition have speculated that Salishan languages lack lexical categories such as nouns and verbs.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Thompson language” as interior Salishan language. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as interior Salishan language. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1755054. The Library of Congress control number is sh85092927. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thompson 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.