Tsimshian, known by its speakers as Sm'álgyax, is a dialect of the Tsimshian language spoken in northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. Sm'algyax means literally "real or true language." The linguist Tonya Stebbins estimated the number of speakers of Tsimshian in 2001 as around 400 and in 2003 as 200 or fewer (see references below). Whichever figure is more accurate, she added in 2003 that most speakers are over 70 in age and very few are under 50. About 50 of an ethnic population of 1,300 Tsimshian in Alaska speak the language. Phonology Vowels Next to transcriptions in the IPA are the conventional orthography in angle brackets. The low back vowel can either be the long [a] or the short and slightly raised [ʌ] depending on context. John Asher Dunn assumes this vowel as the schwa. Underlining /a/ is optional for indicating the back long vowel, and fluent speakers will usually omit it. Dunn's representation of the high back vowel seems to be slightly more forward than the IPA equivalent, since he uses the phonetic symbols [ɨ̈] or [ɪ̈]. Consonants As in the Vowels section, symbols in boldface reflect the conventional orthography, and IPA equivalents are given in brackets. In the practical orthography, uvulars are indicated by underlining the velar letters, , and the position of the apostrophe before or after the consonant letter distinguishes glottalization. Both John Asher Dunn and Franz Boas (as reported by A.C. Graf von der Schulenberg ) find that the fricative /s/ has two variants: [s] or [ʃ]. The velar glide /ɰ/ is a "w pronounced with lips unrounded". The glottalization diacritic may be switched to the other side of a velar segment depending on whether it falls pre-, post- or intervocalically. In speech, glottalized segments before a vowel will result in simultaneous realization of both, [kʼ]. Glottalized segments that follow vowels produce the glottalization first, then the consonant closure, [ʼk]. Intervocalically, the glottalization depends on where the stress falls. [ʼk] is pronounced after a stressed syllable, and [kʼ] is pronounced before a stress. Orthography The Tsimshian orthography in use today is based on that developed by Tsimshianicists since the 1960s. It originally stems from Bruce Rigsby's work on the Gitksan language and includes John A. Dunn's work on Tsimshian and Marie-Lucie Tarpent's work on Nisga'a and Southern Tsimshian. Dunn, Tarpent, and Susan Marsden substantially revised it for School District No. 52 (Prince Rupert) when