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Carrier language
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Carrier language
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.
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.
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.
All dialects of Carrier have essentially the same consonant system, which is shown in this chart.
There are three series of stops and affricates: aspirated, unaspirated (written voiced in the practical orthography), and ejective.
As of the late 20th century, some conservative older speakers of Carrier had a contrast between apico-alveolar and lamino-dental series of fricatives and affricates. For other speakers, the lamino-dental series have merged with the apico-alveolar series. The contrast had become so obscure that when, in 1995, after many years of effort, the Carrier Bible Fellowship finally published the Stuart Lake dialect translation of the New Testament, they omitted marking of the lamino-dental series.
Carrier has six surface-phonemic vowels:
Front and back vowels are tense in open syllables and lax in closed syllables. The reduced vowel /ə/ is quite variable in its realization: it approaches [i] immediately preceding /j/ and approaches [a] when either or both adjacent consonants are laryngeal. Unlike in some related languages, there is no distinctive nasalization; that is, Carrier does not contrast oral and nasal vowels.
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Carrier language
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.
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.
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.
All dialects of Carrier have essentially the same consonant system, which is shown in this chart.
There are three series of stops and affricates: aspirated, unaspirated (written voiced in the practical orthography), and ejective.
As of the late 20th century, some conservative older speakers of Carrier had a contrast between apico-alveolar and lamino-dental series of fricatives and affricates. For other speakers, the lamino-dental series have merged with the apico-alveolar series. The contrast had become so obscure that when, in 1995, after many years of effort, the Carrier Bible Fellowship finally published the Stuart Lake dialect translation of the New Testament, they omitted marking of the lamino-dental series.
Carrier has six surface-phonemic vowels:
Front and back vowels are tense in open syllables and lax in closed syllables. The reduced vowel /ə/ is quite variable in its realization: it approaches [i] immediately preceding /j/ and approaches [a] when either or both adjacent consonants are laryngeal. Unlike in some related languages, there is no distinctive nasalization; that is, Carrier does not contrast oral and nasal vowels.
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