Dene Suline language

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colspan="3" style="text-align: center; font-size:120%; color: black; background-color: Template:Infobox Language/family-color;" \|Dene Suline Dëne Sųłiné
Spoken in:	Canada
Region:	Northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba; southern Northwest Territories and Nunavut
Total speakers:	4,000
Language family:	Template:Infobox Language/genetic2 Athabaskan-Eyak Athabaskan Northern Athabaskan Northwestern Canada Dene Suline
colspan="3" style="text-align: center; color: black; background-color: Template:Infobox Language/family-color;" \|Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`chp`
ISO 639-3:	`chp`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Dene Suline (also Dëne Sųłiné, Dene Sųłiné, Chipewyan, Dene Suliné, Dëne Suliné, Dene Soun’liné) is the language spoken by the Chipewyan people of central Canada (parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) and is also called Dene. Chipewyan is part of the Athabaskan family and is related to the Navajo language. This language is spoken by 4,000 out of 6,000 ethnic Chipewyans.

Dene Suline is one of the official languages of the Northwest Territories, the others being English, French, Cree, Dogrib, Gwichʼin, Inuktitut, and Slavey.

1 Sounds
2 See also
3 External links
4 Bibliography

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Consonants

The 39 consonants of Dene Suline:

		Bilabial	Interdental	Dental		Post-alveolar	Velar		Glottal
		Bilabial	Interdental	central	lateral	Post-alveolar	plain	labial	Glottal
Stop	unaspirated	p		t			k	kʷ
	aspirated			tʰ			kʰ	kʷʰ
	ejective			tʼ			kʼ	kʼʷ	ʔ
Affricate	unaspirated		tθ	ʦ	tɬ	ʧ
	aspirated		tθʰ	ʦʰ	tɬʰ	ʧʰ
	ejective		tθʼ	ʦʼ	tɬʼ	ʧʼ
Nasal		m		n
Trill				r
Fricative	voiceless		θ	s	ɬ	ʃ	χ	χʷ	h
Fricative	voiced		ð	z	ɮ	ʒ	ʁ	ʁʷ

The "velar" fricatives are actually uvular.

[edit] Vowels

Dene Suline has vowels of 6 differing qualities.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Upper-Mid	e		o
Lower-Mid	ɛ
Low		a

Most vowels can be either

oral or nasal
short or long

As a result, Dene Suline has 18 phonemic vowels:

		Front		Central		Back
		short	long	short	long	short	long
High	oral	i	iː			u	uː
High	nasal	ĩ	ĩː			ũ	ũː
Mid-upper		e				o
Mid-lower	oral	ɛ	ɛː
Mid-lower	nasal	ɛ̃	ɛ̃ː
Low	oral			a	aː
Low	nasal			ã	ãː

Dene Suline also has 9 oral and nasal diphthongs of the form vowel + /j/.

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
High					uj	ũj
Mid	ej	ẽj	əj		oj	õj
Low			aj	ãj

[edit] Tone

Dene Suline has two tones:

high
low

[edit] See also

Chipewyan Syllabics

[edit] External links

Chipewyan at Ethnologue
Our Languages: Dene (Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre)
- history & background
- reservations
- reservation maps
- preservation/revitalization
- alphabet
- grammar
- terms/phrases (includes sound files)

[edit] Bibliography

Cook, Eung-Do. (2004). A grammar of Dëne Sųłiné (Chipewyan). Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics - Special Athabaskan Number, Memoir 17. Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics. ISBN 0-921064-17-9.
Cook, Eung-Do. 2006. "The Patterns of Consonantal Acquisition and Change in Chipewyan (Dene Suline)". International Journal of American Linguistics. 72, no. 2: 236.
De Reuse, Willem. 2006. "A Grammar of Dene Suline (Chipewyan) (Cook)". International Journal of American Linguistics. 72, no. 4: 535.
Elford, Leon W. Dene sųłiné yati ditł'ísé = Dene sųłiné reader. Prince Albert, SK: Northern Canada Mission Distributors, 2001. ISBN 1896968287
Gessner, S. 2005. "Properties of Tone in Dene Suline". Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series IV, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. 269: 229-248.
Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
Li, Fang-Kuei. (1946). Chipewyan. In C. Osgood & H. Hoijer (Eds.), Linguistic structures of native America (pp. 398-423). New York: The Viking Fund.
Osgood, Cornelius; & Hoijer, Harry (Eds.). (1946). Linguistic structures of native America. Viking fund publications in anthropology (No. 6). New York: The Viking Fund. (Reprinted 1963, 1965, 1967, & 1971, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp.).