Dakelh
Carrier
ᑕᗸᒡ
Native to	Canada
Region	Central Interior of British Columbia
Ethnicity	9,350 Carrier people (2014, FPCC)
Native speakers	1,270 (2016 census)[1]
Language family	Dené–Yeniseian? Na-Dené Athabaskan Northern Athabaskan Dakelh
Dialects	Southern Nak'albun/Dzinghubun
Writing system	Carrier Linguistic Committee alphabet Carrier syllabics
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: crx – Carrier caf – Southern Carrier
Glottolog	carr1248
ELP	Dakelh (Carrier)
Carrier language communities in British Columbia
Carrier is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

The Dakelh (ᑕᗸᒡ) or Carrier language is a Northern Athabaskan language. It is named after the Dakelh people, a First Nations people of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, for whom Carrier has been a common English name derived from French explorers naming of the people. Dakelh people speak two related languages. One, Babine-Witsuwit'en is sometimes referred to as Northern Carrier. The other includes what are sometimes referred to as Central Carrier and Southern Carrier.

Etymology of 'Carrier'

The name 'Carrier' is a translation of the Sekani name 'aɣele' "people who carry things around on their backs", due to the fact that the first Europeans to learn of the Carrier, the Northwest Company explorers led by Alexander Mackenzie, first passed through the territory of the Carriers' Sekani neighbours.^[2]

The received view of the origin of the Sekani name is that it refers to the distinctive Carrier mortuary practice in which a widow carried her husband's ashes on her back during the period of mourning. An alternative hypothesis is that it refers to the fact that the Dakeł, unlike the Sekani, participated in trade with the coast, which required packing loads of goods over the Grease Trails.

Phonology

Writing system

The writing system in general use today is the Carrier Linguistic Committee writing system, a Roman-based system developed in the 1960s by missionaries and a group of Carrier people with whom they worked. The CLC writing system was designed to be typed on a standard English typewriter. It uses numerous digraphs and trigraphs to write the many Carrier consonants not found in English, e.g. ⟨gh⟩ for [ɣ] and ⟨lh⟩ for [ɬ], with an apostrophe to mark glottalization, e.g. ⟨ts'⟩ for the ejective alveolar affricate. Letters generally have their English rather than European values. For example, ⟨u⟩ represents /ə/ while ⟨oo⟩ represents /u/.

The only diacritic it uses in its standard form is the underscore, which is written under the sibilants (⟨s̲⟩, ⟨z̲⟩, ⟨t̲s̲⟩, and ⟨d̲z̲⟩) to indicate that the consonant is laminal denti-alveolar rather than apical alveolar. An acute accent is sometimes used to mark high tone, but tone is not routinely written in Dakeł. The southern dialect uses a modified version of the alphabet.

A grave inscribed in Carrier Syllabics

Carrier was formerly written in a writing system inspired by the Cree Syllabics known variously as the Carrier syllabics or Déné Syllabics. This writing system was widely used for several decades from its inception in 1885 but began to fade in the 1930s. Today few in the community use or read it.

A good deal of scholarly material, together with the first edition of the 'Little Catechism' and the third edition of a 'Prayerbook', is written in the writing system used by the missionary priest Adrien-Gabriel Morice in his scholarly work. This writing system was a somewhat idiosyncratic version of the phonetic transcription of the time. It is subphonemic and was never used by Carrier people themselves, though many learned to read the Prayerbook in it. (citation)

Morphology

Syntax

In general terms, Carrier is a head-final language: the verb comes at the end of the clause, adpositions are postpositions rather than prepositions, and complementizers follow their clause. However, it is not consistently head-final: in head-external relative clauses, the relative clause follows the head noun. Carrier has both head-internal and head-external relative clauses. The subject usually precedes the object if one is present.

Carrier is an 'everything-drop' language. A verb can form a grammatical sentence by itself. It is not in general necessary for the subject or object to be expressed overtly by a noun phrase or pronoun.

Semantics

Classification

Carrier is generally regarded as one of three members of the central British Columbia subgroup of Athabaskan, the other two being Babine-Witsuwit'en and Tŝilhqot’in. As noted above, the term 'Carrier' has often been applied to both Carrier proper and Babine-Witsuwit'en but this identification is now rejected by specialists.^[5][6][7] The Ethnologue treats Carrier proper as consisting of two languages, Dakelh (code: crx) and Southern Carrier (code: caf), where the latter consists of the dialects of the Ulkatcho, Kluskus, Nazko, and Red Bluff bands. More recent research disputes the treatment of "Southern Carrier" as a distinct language and in fact classifies this dialect group as one of two parts of a larger 'Southern Carrier' dialect group that contains all of Carrier proper except for the Stuart/Trembleur Lake dialect. Southern Carrier in the sense of the Ethnologue, that is, the Blackwater dialect group, is mutually comprehensible with all other Carrier dialects.

Dialects

Current research divides Carrier into two major dialect groups, a Stuart-Trembleur Lake group, and a Southern group. The Southern group, in turn, is divided into two subgroups, the Fraser-Nechako group, comprising the communities of Cheslatta, Stellako, Nadleh, Saik'uz, and Lheidli, and the Blackwater group, comprising the communities of Lhk'acho (Ulgatcho), Lhoosk'uz (Kluskus), Nazko, and Lhtakoh (Red Bluff).^[8]

The Carrier Region

Much of the literature distinguishes Central Carrier (Dakeł) from Southern Carrier (Dakeł). Unfortunately, the usage of these terms is quite variable. Almost all material in or about Central Carrier (Dakeł) is in the Stuart Lake dialect.^[9] However, Central Carrier cannot be taken to be a synonym for Stuart-Trembleur Lake dialect because some of the more northerly of the Southern dialects, particularly Saik'uz dialect, are sometimes included in Central Carrier.

Although all speakers of all varieties of Carrier can communicate with each other with little difficulty, these varieties are quite diverse, differing not only in phonological details and lexicon but in morphology and even syntax.

Contact with other languages

Dakelh is neighbored on the west by Babine-Witsuwit'en and Haisla, to the north by Sekani, to the southeast by Shuswap, to the south by Chilcotin, and to the southwest by Nuxalk. Furthermore, in the past few centuries, with the westward movement of the Plains Cree, there has been contact with the Cree from the East. Dakelh has borrowed from some of these languages, but apparently not in large numbers. Loans from Cree include [məsdus] ('cow') from Cree (which originally meant "buffalo" but extended to "cow" already in Cree) and [sunija] ('money, precious metal'). There are also loans from languages that do not directly neighbor Dakelh territory. A particularly interesting example is [maj] ('berry, fruit'), a loan from Gitksan, which has been borrowed into all Dakelh dialects and has displaced the original Athabascan word.

Dakelh and the neighbouring languages

European contact has brought loans from a number of sources. The majority of demonstrable loans into Dakelh are from French, though it is not generally clear whether they come directly from French or via Chinook Jargon. Loans from French include [liɡok] ('chicken') (from French le coq 'rooster'), [lisel] (from le sel 'salt'), and [lizas] ('angel'). As these examples show, the French article is normally incorporated into the Dakelh borrowing. A single loan from Spanish is known: [mandah] ('canvas, tarpaulin'), from manta, apparently acquired from Spanish-speaking packers.

The trade language Chinook Jargon came into use among Dakelh people as a result of European contact. Most Dakelh people never knew Chinook Jargon. It appears to have been known in most areas primarily by men who had spent time freighting on the Fraser River. Knowledge of Chinook Jargon may have been more common in the southwestern part of Dakelh country due to its use at Bella Coola. The southwestern dialects have more loans from Chinook Jargon than other dialects. For example, while most dialects use the Cree loan described above for "money", the southwestern dialects use [tʃikəmin], which is from Chinook Jargon. The word [daji] ('chief') is a loan from Chinook Jargon.

European contact brought many new objects and ideas. The names for some were borrowed, but in most cases terms have been created using the morphological resources of the language, or by extending or shifting the meaning of existing terms. Thus, [tɬʼuɬ] now means not only "rope" but also "wire", while [kʼa] has shifted from its original meaning of "arrow" to mean "cartridge" and [ʔəɬtih] has shifted from "bow" to "rifle". [hutʼəp], originally "leeches" now also means "pasta". A microwave oven is referred to as [ʔa benəlwəs] ('that by means of which things are warmed quickly'). "Mustard" is [tsʼudənetsan] ('children's feces'), presumably after the texture and color rather than the flavor.

Status

Like most of the languages of British Columbia, Dakelh is an endangered language.^[10] Only about 10% of Dakelh people now speak the Dakelh language, hardly any of them children. Members of the generation following that of the last speakers can often understand the language but they do not contribute to its transmission.

The UNESCO status of Carrier/Dakelh is "Severely Endangered", which means the language rates an average of 2/5 on UNESCO's 9 factors of language vitality, with 5 being safe and 0 being extinct. According to Dwyer's article on tools and techniques for endangered language assessment and revitalization,^[11] the three most critical factors out of the nine are factors numbered one - intergenerational transmission, three - proportion of speakers within the total population, and four - trends in existing language domains. Carrier scores in the "severely endangered" category for all three of these most important factors, as well as most of the nine.

Revitalization and maintenance efforts

Banner in Dakelh language

Carrier is taught as a second language in both public and band schools throughout the territory. This instruction provides an acquaintance with the language but has not proven effective in producing functional knowledge of the language. Carrier has also been taught at the University of Northern British Columbia, the College of New Caledonia, and the University of British Columbia. Several communities have underway mentor apprentice programs and language nests.

The Yinka Dene Language Institute (YDLI) is charged with the maintenance and promotion of Dakelh language and culture. Its activities include research, archiving, curriculum development, teacher training, literacy instruction, and production of teaching and reference materials.

Prior to the founding of YDLI in 1988 the Carrier Linguistic Committee, a group based in Fort Saint James affiliated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, produced a number of publications in Dakelh, literacy materials for several dialects, a 3000-entry dictionary of the Stuart Lake dialect,^[12] and various other materials.

The Carrier Linguistic Committee is largely responsible for literacy among younger speakers of the language. The Carrier Bible Translation Committee produced a translation of the New Testament that was published in 1995.^[13] An adaptation to Blackwater dialect appeared in 2002.^[14]

Documentation efforts have been varied and the extent of documentation differs considerably from dialect to dialect. By far the best documented dialect is the Stuart Lake dialect, of which Father Adrien-Gabriel Morice published a massive grammar and dictionary. More recent work includes the publication of some substantial pieces of text by the Carrier Linguistic Committee, the publication of a grammar sketch, and the on-going creation of a large electronic dictionary, with a corresponding print version, that contains earlier material, including Morice's, as well as much new material. For other dialects there are print and/or electronic dictionaries ranging from 1,500 or so entries up to over 9,000.

Cause of endangerment

The decline in use of Carrier is due to two causes, both aspects of colonization. The first is the heavy influence of English, the dominant language in education, business, government and media.

The second is the attempt to suppress the language by the Canadian government in residential schools beginning in 1919. Speakers of Carrier may also find speaking their language traumatic after their abuse in the residential school system. Additionally, speakers may have intended to protect their children from experiencing similar abuses and so did not teach or use the language with children.^[15]

Place names in Dakelh

Here are the Dakelh names for some of the major places in Dakelh territory, written in the Carrier Linguistic Committee writing system:

• Mount Pope – Nak'al
• Fort St. James – Nakʼaz̠dli
• Stuart Lake – Nakʼalbun
• Stuart River – Nakʼalkoh
• Fraser Lake – Nadlehbun
• Nautley River – Nadlehkoh
• Endako River – Ndakoh
• Stellako River – Stellakoh
• Tachie River – Duzdlikoh
• Nechako River – Nechakoh
• Fraser River – Lhtakoh
• Prince George - Lheidli
• Babine Lake – Nadobun
• Burns Lake – T̠s̠elhkʼazkoh
• Francois Lake – Nedabun
• Cluculz Lake – Lhoohkʼuz

Attestation

The earliest record of the language consists of a list of 25 words recorded^[16] by Alexander MacKenzie on June 22, 1793.^[17] This is followed by a few Dakelh words mentioned in the journal of Simon Fraser for the year 1806 and by a list of over 300 words given in an appendix to his journal by Daniel Harmon, published in 1820. The first known text by native speakers of Carrier is the Barkerville Jail Text of 1885.

See also

• Babine-Witsuwit'en

References

Bibliography

(A full bibliography is available at: http://www.ydli.org/biblios/lingbib.htm.)

• Antoine, Francesca; Bird, Catherine; Isaac, Agnes; Prince, Nellie; Sam, Sally; Walker, Richard, and Wilkinson, David B. (1974) Central Carrier Bilingual Dictionary. Fort Saint James, British Columbia: Carrier Linguistic Committee.
• Cook, Eung-Do (1976) A Phonological Study of Chilcotin and Carrier. Report to the National Museum on Contract No. E10-75-8. Part II: Central Carrier Phonology.
• Morice, Adrien-Gabriel (1932) The Carrier Language. Mödling bei Wien, St. Gabriel, Austria: Verlag der Internationalen Zeitschrift "Anthropos".
• Poser, William J. (1998) Nak'albun/Dzinghubun Whut'enne Bughuni (Stuart/Trembleur Lake Carrier Lexicon). Vanderhoof, BC: Yinka Dene Language Institute. Second edition.
• Poser, William J. (2000) Saik'uz Whut'en Hubughunek (Stoney Creek Carrier Lexicon). Vanderhoof, BC: Saik'uz First Nation. Fourth edition. (March 2000)
• Poser, William J. (2005) "Noun Classification in Carrier". Anthropological Linguistics 47.2.143-168. prepublication version
• Poser, William J. (2009) The Carrier Language: A Brief Introduction. Prince George, British Columbia: College of New Caledonia Press Archived 2013-12-03 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN 978-0-921087-45-8.
• Story, Gillian L. (1984) Babine and Carrier Phonology: A Historically Oriented Study. Arlington, Texas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Walker, Richard (1979) "Central Carrier Phonemics," in Eric P. Hamp et al. (eds.) Contributions to Canadian Linguistics. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. pp. 93–107.
• Yinka Dene Language Institute "Dialects"

External links

• The Yinka Dene Language Institute Website contains extensive information about the Dakelh language and other First Nations languages of British Columbia.
• Carrier Language Resources Curated list of materials and web sites
• The Carrier Sekani Tribal Council represents many of the Dakelh bands. Its web site contains information about the tribe and about current political issues.
• Map of Northwest Coast First Nations Note, however, that the Dakelh-speaking region is marked incorrectly on this map. The area around Babine Lake and Takla Lake, included in the Dakelh region on the map, is actually Babine speaking. A correct map would attach the Babine and Takla Lake areas to what is shown on this map as "Wet'suwet'en" and label the combination "Babine-Witsuwit'en".
• Words from the west (Language Log)
• Dictionary of Lheidli Dialect
• Dictionary of Saik'uz Dialect
• Dictionary of Stuart Lake Dialect
• Dictionary of Ulkatcho Dialect
• Interactive Map of Dakelh Place Names
• FirstVoices: Dakelh / Southern Carrier Community Portal
• FirstVoices: Nadleh Whut'en Community Portal
• FirstVoices: Nakʼazdli Dakelh Community Portal
• Central Carrier basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database