Today, it is an endangered language in the vicinity of the Canadian town of Bella Coola, British Columbia.

Nuxalk language classes, if taken to at least the Grade 11 level, are considered adequate second-language qualifications for entry to the major B.C.

[7] Nowadays, Nuxalk is spoken only in Bella Coola, British Columbia, surrounded by Wakashan- and Athabascan-speaking tribes.

For instance, the following word contains only obstruents: clh-possess-p'xwlht-bunchberry-lhp-plant-lhh-PAST.PERF-s=3SG.SUB/3SG.OBJ=kwtsthenclh- p'xwlht- lhp- lhh- s= kwtspossess- bunchberry- plant- PAST.PERF- 3SG.SUB/3SG.OBJ= then'then he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant.'

Speech rate plays a role, with e.g. ɬxʷtʰɬt͡sʰxʷ 'you spat on me' consisting of all syllabic consonants in citation form (ɬ.xʷ.tʰ.ɬ.t͡sʰ.xʷ) but condensed to stop-fricative syllables (ɬxʷ.tɬ.t͡sʰxʷ) at fast conversational speed.

The linguist Hank Nater has postulated the existence of a phonemic contrast between syllabic and non-syllabic sonorants: /m̩, n̩, l̩/, spelled ṃ, ṇ, ḷ.

)[12] Words claimed to have unpredictable syllables include sṃnṃnṃuuc 'mute', smṇmṇcaw '(the fact) that they are children'.

Whether the parenthesized segments are included in the suffix depends on whether the stem ends in an underlying resonant (vowel, liquid, nasal) and whether it is non-syllabic.

[further explanation needed] The following are the possible person markers for transitive verbs, with empty cells indications non-occurring combinations and '--' identifying semantic combinations which require the reflexive suffix -cut- followed by the appropriate intransitive suffix: E.g. sp̓-is ti-ʔimlk-tx ti-stn-tx 'the man struck the tree'.

There is a further causative paradigm whose suffixes may be used instead: This has a passive counterpart: This may also have a benefactive gloss when used with events involving less activity of their participant (e.g. nuyamł-tus ti-ʔimlk-tx ti-ʔimmllkī-tx 'the man made/let the boy sing'/'the man sang for the boy'), while in events with more active participants only the causative gloss is possible.

In the later group even more active verbs have a preference for the affix -lx- (implying passive experience) before the causative suffix.

For example: There are four prepositions which have broad usage in Nuxalk: Nuxalk has a set of deictic prefixes and suffixes which serve to identify items as instantiations of domains rather than domains themselves and to locate them in deictic space.

While events are not explicitly marked for tense per se, deixis plays a strong role in determining when the proposition is being asserted to occur.

Not every distal participant occurs in past-tense sentences, and vice versa—rather, the deictic suffixes must either represent positions in space, time, or both.