I spent a lot of my childhood growing up on the rez. And at home, we spoke some Salish in our day-to-day dealings. Not much, just a word or phrase here and there (that I've mostly forgotten).
One of those phrases was "Q'lal'ŝ", which just means "suppertime", or something similar. And it was how my family would call everybody to the table for a meal. Mom would say "go get your siblings for supper" and so we would just holler "q'lal'ŝ!!" down the hallway.
But as a kid, I didn't know that we were speaking Salish, a dead language that nobody really speaks anymore. I just thought that was a normal regular American thing to do. And so like, even when staying at a friend's house, that's how I would call them to supper.
Nobody pointed it out to me until middle school, when my friend Tyler's mom very politely asked me "what the HELL did you just say?", and I found out that, no, in fact. The average American does not sprinkle phrases in upper Salishan dialects into their day-to-day vernacular.






















