Language History Sacred sites and Objects Welcome to the language section of the web-site. This language was traditionally not a written language. Until the 1970s and 1980 when a group of elders and a linguist named Brent Galloway from Berkeley, produced a standard orthography. On this page is how to speak Halq'em ylem, or at least it might give you an idea of how to speak it.
Some words have several stressed vowels.
The stress marks are needed to tell which part of the word is said louder and higher. Without this a speaker will have a foreign accent or say the wrong word. Stress means the vowel is pronounced fairly loud and with a higher melody than if the vowel was unstressed. High stress has the highest pitch, about four notes above a vowel without a stress mark. These are popped consonants.