DENE SULINE LANGUAGE

'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, , Inuktitut, and Slavey.

Contents

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Tone

External links

Bibliography

Sounds

Consonants

The 39 consonants of Dene Suline:

		Bilabial	Interdental	Dental		Post-alveolar	Velar		Glottal
				central	lateral		plain	labial
'Stop'	unaspirated
	aspirated
	ejective
'Affricate'	unaspirated
	aspirated
	ejective
'Nasal'
'Trill'
'Fricative'	voiceless
	voiced

The "velar" fricatives are actually uvular.

Vowels

Dene Suline has vowels of 6 differing qualities.

	Front	Central	Back
'High'
'Upper-Mid'
'Lower-Mid'
'Low'

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
	nasal
'Mid-upper'
'Mid-lower'	oral
	nasal
'Low'	oral
	nasal

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

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
'High'
'Mid'
'Low'

Tone

Dene Suline has two tones:

★ high

★ low

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)

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.

★ 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.).