Sekani language

The Sekani language or Tse’khene is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken by 135 of the Sekani people of north-central British Columbia, Canada. Most of them are only semispeakers, and it is considered critically endangered.

Sekani has 33 consonants:

Sekani has two tones: low and high. High tone is the more common tone. Syllables phonologically marked for tone are low. For example, tsun means 'dirt', while tsùn means 'meat'.

Nasalization of vowels is phonemic. The root *ghèl means 'scrape', while the root *ghę̀l means 'roll'. Nasal vowels also contrast with vowels followed by /n/.

The orthography of the Kwadcha Tsek'ene dictionary uses the following letters.

In addition, ⟨wu⟩ represents /ʊ/, ⟨iii⟩ represents /iː/, ⟨ee⟩ represents /eː/, and ⟨aa⟩ represents /ɑː/.

These words are from the FirstVoices dictionary for Kwadacha Tsek'ene dialect.

• Hargus, Sharon (1988). The Lexical Phonology of Sekani. Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8240-5187-4.
  • Original dissertation:Hargus, Sharon Louise (1985). The Lexical Phonology of Sekani (PhD dissertation). Los Angeles: University of California.
• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521298759.

• Hargus, Sharon (26 June 2010). Effects on consonant duration in Fort Ware Tsek'ene (PDF). Athabaskan/Dene Languages Conference. Eugene, OR. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016.
  • "References" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016.
• Hargus, Sharon (2009). Causatives and transitionals in Kwadacha Tsek'ene (PDF). Athabaskan Languages Conference. Berkeley, CA. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
• Hargus, Sharon (10 July 2010). Phonetic vs. phonological rounding in Athabaskan languages (PDF). LabPhon 12. Albuquerque, NM.
  • References:"References" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
  • Journal article:Hargus, Sharon (2012). "Deg Xinag Rounding Assimilation: A case study in phonologization". Journal of Laboratory Phonology. 3 (1): 163–193. doi:10.1515/lp-2012-0010.

• First Voices Kwadacha Tsek'ene Community Portal
• Sekani entry on First Nations Languages of British Columbia site
• Bibliography of Sekani Linguistics
• Map of Northwest Coast First Nations (including Sekani)
• OLAC resources in and about the Sekani language