The Salishan languages, also known as the Salish languages, are a family of languages spoken in the Pacific Northwest of North America, including the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. They are characterised by agglutinativity and syllabic consonants. For instance, the Nuxalk word clhp’xwlhtlhplhhskwts', meaning 'he had had [in his possession] a bunchberry plant', has twelve obstruent consonants in a row with no phonetic or phonemic vowels.