Overview
With the help of elders, educators, and tribal councils of the Klallam Tribes at Elwha, Port Gamble, and Jamestown, Washington, and Becher Bay on Vancouver Island, Timothy Montler has compiled a comprehensive dictionary of the Klallam language. It includes over 9,000 entries, a brief grammatical sketch, and numerous indexes, along with a wealth of cultural information.
Klallam is the language of the people whose ancestors lived at Tse-whit-zen, the largest archaeological site in Washington. It is an endangered language being revived through the efforts of the Klallam Language Program. While there are fewer than a dozen speakers of Klallam as their first language, there are hundreds who have gone through tribal language programs in the past twenty years.