The Chipewyan language is the language spoken by the Chipewyan people of central Canada (parts of Alberta, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan) 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.

Chipewyan is one of the official languages of the Northwest Territories, the others being English, French, Cree language, Dogrib, Gwich'in, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, and Slavey.

Contents

1 Sounds 1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels 1.3 Tone 2 Bibliography

Sounds

Consonants

The 39 consonants of Chipweyan:

		Bilabial	Interdental	Dental		Post-alveolar	Velar		Glottal
				central	lateral		plain	labial
Stop	unaspirated			t			k	kʷ
	aspirated			tʰ			kʰ	kʷʰ
	ejective			t’			k’	k’ʷ	ʔ
Affricate	unaspirated		tθ	ʦ	tɬ	ʧ
	aspirated		tθʰ	ʦʰ	tɬʰ	ʧʰ
	ejective		tθ’	ʦ’	tɬ’	ʧ’
Nasal		m		n
Trill				r
Fricative	voiceless		θ	s	ɬ	ʃ	x	xʷ	h
	voiced		ð	z	ɮ	ʒ	ɣ	ɣʷ

Vowels

Chipewyan has vowels of 6 differing qualities.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Upper-Mid	e		o
Lower-Mid	ɛ
Low		a

Most vowels can be either

• oral or nasal
• short or long

As a result, Chipewyan has 18 phonemic vowels:

		Front		Central		Back
		short	long	short	long	short	long
High	oral	i	iː			u	uː
	nasal	ĩ	ĩː			ũ	ũː
Mid-upper		e				o
Mid-lower	oral	ɛ	ɛː
	nasal	ɛ̃	ɛ̃ː
Low	oral			a	aː
	nasal			ã	ãː

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

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
High					uj	ũj
Mid	ej	ẽj	əj		oj	õj
Low			aj	ãj

Tone

Chipewyan has two tones:

• high
• low

Bibliography

• 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.).