Dogrib language

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Dogrib
Tłįchǫ Yatiì
Spoken in	Canada
Region	Northwest Territories
Total speakers	2,640 [1]
Language family	Dené-Yeniseian Na-Dené Athabaskan-Eyak Athabaskan Northern Athabaskan Dogrib
Official status
Official language in	Northwest Territories
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	dgr
ISO 639-3	dgr
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Dogrib, the English translation of the indigenous name Tłįchǫ Yatiì (IPA: [tɬʰĩtʃʰõ jatʰîː]), is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the First Nations Tłįchǫ people of the Canadian territory Northwest Territories. According to Statistics Canada in 2006, there were approximately 2,640 people who spoke Dogrib.^[1]

The Dogrib region covers the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, reaching almost up to Great Bear Lake. Rae-Edzo, now known by its Dogrib name, Behchokǫ̀, is the largest community in the Dogrib Region.

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels 2 Grammar 3 Notes 4 Further reading 5 External links

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Consonants

The consonants of Dogrib in the standard orthography are listed below (with IPA notation in brackets):

		Bilabial	Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
			central	lateral			plain	labialized
Nasal	plain	m  /m/	n  /n/
	prenasalized	mb  /mb/	nd  /nd/
Plosive	voiced	b  /b/	d  /d/				g  /ɡ/	gw  /ɡʷ/
	voiceless		t  /t/				k  /k/	kw  /kʷ/	’  /ʔ/
	ejective		t’  /tʼ/				k’  /kʼ/	kw’  /kʷʼ/
Affricate	voiced		dz  /dz/	dl  /dɮ/	j  /dʒ/
	voiceless		ts  /ts/	tl  /tɬ/	ch  /tʃ/
	ejective		ts’  /tsʼ/	tl’  /tɬʼ/	ch’  /tʃʼ/
Fricative	voiced		z  /z/		zh  /ʒ/		gh  /ɣ/
	voiceless		s  /s/	ł  /ɬ/	sh  /ʃ/		x  /x/		h  /h/
Approximant	voiced		r  /ɹ/	l  /l/		y  /j/		w  /w/
	voiceless							wh  /ʍ/

[edit] Vowels

• short
  • a /a/
  • e /e/
  • i /i/
  • o /o/
  • ą /ã/
  • ę /ẽ/
  • į /ĩ/
  • ǫ /õ/
• long
  • aa /aː/
  • ee /eː/
  • ii /iː/
  • oo /oː/
  • ąą /ãː/
  • ęę /ẽː/
  • įį /ĩː/
  • ǫǫ /õː/
• nasal vowels are marked by an ogonek (called wighǫą - 'its little nose' in Dogrib) e.g., ą
• low tone is marked with a grave accent (called wets'aà - 'its hat' in Dogrib), e.g., à
• high tone is never marked

[edit] Grammar

Typologically, Dogrib is an agglutinating, polysynthetic head-marking language, but many of its affixes combine into contractions more like fusional languages. The canonical word order of Dogrib is SOV. Dogrib words are modified primarily by prefixes, which is unusual for an SOV language (suffixes are expected).

In addition to verbs and nouns, there are pronouns, clitics of various functions, demonstratives, numerals, postpositions, adverbs, and conjunctions in Dogrib. The class of adjectives is very small, probably around two dozen words: most descriptive words are verbs rather than adjectives.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Saxon, Leslie and Mary Siemens. Tłįchǫ Yatiì Multimedia Dictionary [1].

[edit] External links

• Dogrib at Ethnologue

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