Danezaa language

Danezaa
Beaver
Spoken in	Canada
Region	British Columbia
Ethnicity	Danezaa
Native speakers	300  (1991)
Language family	Dené–Yeniseian Na-Dené Athabaskan–Eyak Athabaskan Northern Athabaskan Danezaa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bea

Danezaa (ᑕᓀᖚ Dane-zaa, Dunneza), also known as Tsattine or traditionally as Beaver, is an Athabascan language of western Canada. About half of the Danezaa people speak the language.

Sounds

Consonants

Dunneza has 35 consonants:

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar		Postalveolar / Palatal	Velar	Glottal
				central	lateral
Nasal		m		n
Plosive	unaspirated	p		t			k
	aspirated			tʰ			kʰ
	ejective			tʼ			kʼ	ʔ
Affricate	unaspirated		ts̪	ts	tɬ	tʃ
	aspirated		ts̪ʰ	tsʰ	tɬʰ	tʃʰ
	ejective		ts̪ʼ	tsʼ	tɬʼ	tʃʼ
Fricative	voiceless		s̪	s	ɬ	ʃ	(x)	h
	voiced		z̪	z	ɮ	ʒ	ɣ
Approximant						j	w

Vowels

Dunneza has 10 phonemic vowels.

		Front	Central	Back
Close	full	i		u
	reduced	ɪ		ʊ
Mid	oral	e		o
	nasal	ẽ		õ
Open	reduced		ɜ
	full		a

Two vowels contrast oral and nasal qualities.

External links

• Beaver page on First Nations Languages of British Columbia site, with bibliography

Bibliography

• Cook, Eung-Do; & Rice, Keren (Eds.). (1989). Athapaskan linguistics: Current perspectives on a language family. Trends in linguistics, State of-the-art reports (No. 15). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 0-89925-282-6.
• Story, Gillian. (1989). Problems of phonemic representation in Beaver. In E.-D. Cook & K. Rice (Eds.), Athapaskan linguistics: Current perspectives on a language family (pp. 63–98). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.