#chipewyan

Chipewyan (ᑌᓀᓱᐠᑦᕄᓀ/Dënesųłiné)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 11,300

Official language: Northwest Territories (Canada)

Script: Dene, 107 letters/Latin, 48 letters

Grammatical cases: 0

Linguistic typology: polysynthetic, SOV

Language family: Na-Dené, Athabaskan, Northern Athabaskan

Number of dialects: -

History

1686 - first encounter of the language by Europeans

18th century - first vocabulary lists

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the Dene syllabary: ᐊ ᐁ ᐃ ᐅᐤ ᐅ ᐧᐊ ᐧᐁ ᐧᐃ ᐧᐅᐤ ᐧᐅ ᐸ ᐯ ᐱ ᐳᐤ ᐳ ᑕ ᑌ ᑎ ᑐᐤ ᑐ ᐊᐨ ᑕ ᑌ ᑎ ᑐᐤ ᑐ ᐊᐡ ᑲ ᑫ ᑭ ᑯᐤ ᑯ ᐊᐠ ᕍ ᕃ ᕄ ᕊᐤ ᕊ ᐊᐟ ᖉ ᖆ ᖇ ᖈᐤ ᖈ ᒪ ᒣ ᒥ ᒧᐤ ᒧ ᐊᒼ ᓇ ᓀ ᓂ ᓄᐤ ᓄ ᐊᐣ ᗃ ᗀ ᗁ ᗂᐤ ᗂ ᐊᑊ ᓭ ᓯ ᓱ ᓴᐤ ᓱ ᐊᐢ ᘔ ᘛ ᘚ ᘕᐤ ᘕ ᔭ ᔦ ᔨ ᔪᐤ ᔪ ᐊᐩ ᖚ ᖗ ᖘ ᖙᐤ ᖙ ᗴ ᗯ ᗰ ᗱᐤ ᗱ ᒐ ᒉ ᒋ ᒍᐤ ᒍ ᐊᒢ ᕮ ᕫ ᕬ ᕭᐤ ᕭ ᕦ ᕞ ᕠ ᕤᐤ ᕤ ᐊᒡ ᐊᕁ.

These are the letters that make up the Latin alphabet: a ą b ch ch’ d dh ddh dł dz e/ë ę g gh ghw h hh hhw i į j k k’ kw kw’ l ł m n o ǫ r s sh t t’ th tth tth’ t tł’ ts ts’ u ų z zh ʔ. 

Nasal vowels are marked with ogoneks in orthography. There are two tones: high and low. The former is marked with an acute accent.

Grammar

Nouns have three numbers (singular, dual, and plural). They have no gender or case.

Complements are placed before nouns. There are only postpositions.

Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, aspect, subject, and object. A series of prefixes placed before the verb root raise or lower transitivity.

Dialects

Canadian syllabics (ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ)

Canadian syllabics is the collective name for the syllabic writing systems used to write the indigenous languages of Canada. It is based on Devanagari and Pitman shorthand.

They are derived from the work of James Evans, a linguist and missionary who was inspired by Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary. The process culminated in 1840, when he formalized the syllabics for Ojibwe and Swampy Cree.

Notable features

Script type: abugida

Writing direction: left-to-right in rows

Number of characters: 79 common letters (75 consonants + 4 vowels)

Languages: Blackfoot, Carrier, Chipewyan, Cree, Dane-zaa, Inuktitut, Naskapi, Ojibwe, Sekani, and Slavey (10)

Because the script is presented in syllabic charts and learned as a syllabary, it is often thought of as such, but it is actually an abugida because consonants and vowels are written independently.

Characters represent vowels or consonants plus vowels. Final consonants are represented by superscript versions of the character with the vowel, and long vowels are marked with an overdot.

Vowels are represented by triangles and fall into two sets: back (-a- and -o-) and front (-e- and -i-). Each set consists of a low (-a- and -e-) and a high (-o- or -i-) vowel. The vowels within each set are mirror images of each other.

Letters used in most languages

Variants for specific languages

Just before Christmas, I had the opportunity to check out Lutsel K’e, otherwise known as Snowdrift. This community of about 300 people is located on the East Arm of Great Slave Lake and is only accessible by plane year-round; in the summertime it can be reached by boat, and by snow machine in the winter. 

The South Slave Divisional Education Council worked with elders from Lutsel K’e to put together a Chipewyan dictionary in their dialect, a tool to help keep the language alive inside and outside the school. When the SSDEC chartered out for the launch, they invited me to fill an empty seat.

A mother's battle for her daughter's name has become a fight for representation of her traditional language — all thanks to one character: ʔ.

Sahaiʔa May Talbot was born on Feb. 15, 2014, to mother Shene Catholique Valpy. Catholique Valpy, 24, chose her daughter's name because of its meaning in her traditional language of Chipewyan: "When the sun just peeks through."

The symbol in Sahaiʔa's name is the glottal stop, an important one in Chipewyan that signifies both pronunciation and meaning. If it were replaced with a different character, Sahaiʔa's name would both sound and mean something completely different.

When Catholique Valpy attempted to register her baby in February of last year, she received a phone call from the Northwest Territories government's vital statistics department, telling her it couldn't support the use of the traditional character. In an email to Catholique Valpy, a government representative explained that's because the glottal stop isn't part of the Roman alphabet. [...]

"I figured I could either drop the glottal, or I could put a hyphen or leave it there," she says. "I wasn't really sure, so I decided to keep it and as a family, we're going to try and fight it."

Catholique Valpy went more than a year without legally registering her baby as her complaint was processed, paying Sahaiʔa's medical expenses out of pocket because of her inability to file for a territorial health card.

Earlier this week, though, the need for identification — for travel, medical, and tax purposes — became too much, and Catholique Valpy got a birth certificate for her daughter with a hyphen replacing the glottal stop.

However, she asserts this is a temporary situation and that she will continue to fight for her daughter's traditional name.

"I want to be able to fight this to be able to have my daughter's name written the right way, the way it's supposed to be," she says. "I don't want to sacrifice my language just because of this.