Chipewyan language

Chipewyan /tʃɪpəˈwaɪən/, ethnonym Dënesųłiné [tenɛsũɬinɛ́], is the language spoken by the Chipewyan people of northwestern Canada. It is categorized as part of the Northern Athabaskan language family. Dënesųłiné has nearly 12,000 speakers in Canada, mostly in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, but only has official status in the Northwest Territories alongside 8 other aboriginal languages: Cree, Dogrib, Gwich’in, Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey and South Slavey.

Most Chipewyan people now use Dene and Dënesųłiné to refer to themselves and their language, respectively. The Saskatchewan communities of Fond-du-Lac, Black Lake, Wollaston Lake and La Loche are a few.

Sounds

Consonants

The 39 consonants of Dënesųłiné:

The "velar" fricatives are actually uvular.

Vowels

Dënesųłiné has vowels of 6 differing qualities.

Most vowels can be either

As a result, Dënesųłiné has 18 phonemic vowels:

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

Dene

The Dene people (/ˈdɛneɪ/ DEN-ay) (Dené) are an aboriginal group of First Nations who inhabit the northern boreal and Arctic regions of Canada. The Dené speak Northern Athabaskan languages. Dene is the common Athabaskan word for "people" (Sapir 1915, p. 558). The term "Dene" has two usages. More commonly, it is used narrowly to refer to the Athabaskan speakers of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada, especially including the Chipewyan (Denesuline), Tlicho (Dogrib), Yellowknives (T'atsaot'ine), Slavey (Deh Gah Got'ine or Deh Cho), and Sahtu (the Eastern group in Jeff Leer's classification; part of the Northwestern Canada group in Keren Rice's classification). But it is sometimes also used to refer to all Northern Athabaskan speakers, who are spread in a wide range all across Alaska and northern Canada. Note that Dene never includes the Pacific Coast Athabaskan or Southern Athabaskan speakers in the continental U.S., despite the fact that the term is used to denote the Athabaskan languages as a whole (the Na-Dene language family). The Southern Athabaskan speakers do, however, refer to themselves with similar words: Diné (Navajo) and Indé (Apache).

Dene (valley)

A dene, derived from the Old English denu and frequently spelled dean, used to be a common name for a valley, in which sense it is frequently found as a component of English place-names, such as Rottingdean and Ovingdean.

In the English counties of Durham and Northumberland a dene is a steep-sided wooded valley through which a burn runs. Many of the incised valleys cut by small streams that flow off the Durham and Northumberland plateau into the North Sea are given the name Dene, as in Castle Eden Dene and Crimdon Dene in Durham and Jesmond Dene in Tyne and Wear.

See also

References

Dene (disambiguation)

The Dene are an aboriginal group of First Nations in northern Canada.

Dene may also refer to:

People

Given name

Surname