Sekani language

Sekani 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.