It is spoken in what is now British Columbia, ranging from southeastern Vancouver Island from the west shore of Saanich Inlet northward beyond Gabriola Island and Nanaimo to Nanoose Bay and including the Lower Mainland from the Fraser River Delta upriver to Harrison Lake and the lower boundary of the Fraser Canyon.

In the classification of Salishan languages, Halkomelem is a member of the Central Salish branch.

Speakers of the Central and Tsamosan languages are often identified in ethnographic literature as "Coast Salish".

The diversity of the Halkomelem dialects is noted to be the result of complex social and economic forces and linguistic change, as many Island people crossed the Georgia Strait to camp along the Fraser River (in both the Downriver and Upriver areas) for the summer runs of salmon.

Arranged marriages between children in different language areas was also common, helping to establish a regional social network in the Strait of Georgia–Puget Sound Basin.

Most are middle-aged or older, and few are monolingual, as there was a flood of English-speaking settlers in the region in the mid-19th century.

Among these, towards the end of the century, the distinguished scientist Maud Menten, spent part of her childhood in Harrison Mills.

In September 2009, the University of California Press published American linguist Brent Galloway's Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem.

[16] Note: All examples are drawn from the Downriver dialect of Halkomelem spoken by the Musqueam band.

Relevant differences in the phonology of the Island and Upriver dialects are noted at the foot of the phoneme charts.

The labiodental fricative /f/ occurs in recent loans from English and their derivatives such as in káfi "coffee" and in číf "chief."

As is the case with many other phonological features, Downriver Halkomelem stands as a link between the other dialect areas, and it is possible that its speakers vary depending on Island or Upriver influence.

Upriver Halkomelem lacks the post-vocalic glottal stops of the other two dialects, and shows compensatory lengthening in that environment.

Based on Suttles' (2004) recordings of several speakers of the Downriver (Musqueam) dialect, stress in Halkomelem consists of an increase in intensity and an accompanying rise in pitch.

When these sounds occur in the middle of words, they are found in sequences of resonant-obstruent, resonant-resonant, and obstruent-resonant.

The glottal stop occurs only adjacent to a vowel, and, within words, it does not follow any obstruent except (the prefix) /s/.

The Cowichan use a cased Latin alphabet with modifier apostrophes and doubled letters for vowel length.

The Musqueam Band language department collaborated with the University of British Columbia to create a typeface called Whitney Salishan that displays all the characters correctly.

Since all words (with the exception of a few adverbs) can function as predicate heads, there is no basis for distinguishing verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

Processes of internal modification of the root include reduplication (of initial CV and CVC), shift in stress and vowel grade, and glottalization of resonants (which also affects suffixes).

The possessor is always preceded by a determiner, although depending on the noun class, it can also appear with an oblique case marker.

For proper nouns, the determiner and the oblique case marker are fused into a single particle.

Aspectual prefixes, which precede predicate heads, have adverbial meaning and express temporal distinctions.

Among inflectional affixes, those of the voice and person systems stand closer to the root than the aspectual prefixes and modal suffixes.

Adjectives usually appear as predicate heads accompanied by particles only, but they can be preceded by auxiliaries and adverbs acting as intensifiers.

As mentioned in the "Morphology" section, there is no dual number or inclusive/exclusive distinction in the language, however, some scholars believe that the forms identified here as second-person "singular" were once used in addressing a married couple, a pair of brothers, or even a family, while the "plural" forms were used for a larger or less integrated group.

In other words, the same particles mark first- and second-person arguments in both intransitive and transitive predicates in main clauses (coordinate constructions).

With the root cʼéw- "help" and /-t/ "transitive," we find: These forms are normally accompanied by person markers.

With a transitive predicate head in a main clause, on the other hand, a third-person agent must be marked by the suffix /-əs/.

Unlike the first- and second-person particles, the suffix does not move to follow an auxiliary or adverb.