Native to Canada | ISO 639-3 bea | |
Region British Columbia, Alberta Ethnicity 1,560 Danezaa in 5 of 7 communities (2014, FPCC) Native speakers 160 in 5 of 7 communities (2014, FPCC) Language family Dené–Yeniseian?
Na-Dené
Athabaskan–Eyak
Athabaskan
Northern Athabaskan
Dane-zaa | ||
Dane-zaa, known in the language as Danezaa ZaageɁ (syll: ᑕᓀᖚ ᖚᗀᐥ) and once known as Beaver, is an Athabascan language of western Canada. It means "people-regular language." About half of the Danezaa people speak the language.
Contents
Beaver is closely related to the languages spoken by neighboring Athabaskan groups, such as Slavey, Sekani, Sarcee, Chipewyan, and Kaska.
Dialects
The dialects of Dane-zaa language are two main groups. Dialects that developed high tone from stem-final glottalic consonants are called high-marked and dialects that developed low tone low-marked. From north to south are as follows:
Use and number of speakers
A 1991 estimate gave 300 total speakers out of a population of 600 Dane-zaa people. As of 2007, Dane-zaa Zaageʔ was spoken "in eastern British Columbia (in the communities of Doig River (Hanás̱ Saahgéʔ), Blueberry, Halfway River, Hudson Hope, and Prophet River) and in northwestern Alberta (in the communities of Horse Lakes, Clear Hills, Boyer River (Rocky Lane), Rock Lane, and Child Lake (Eleske) Reserves)." A 2011 CD by Garry Oker features traditional Beaver language chanting with world beat and country music.
Language Loss
English is now the first language of most Dane-zaa children, and of many adults in the Dane-zaa communities. Dane-zaa Zaageʔ was the primary language until the grandparents and parents started to send their children to school in the 1950s. English only became dominant in the 1980s. Because the language is orally based, Dane-zaa Zaageʔ becomes increasingly endangered as the fluent speakers pass away.
Language Documentation
The Rev Alfred Campbell Garrioch (1848-1934) was a Christian missionary of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) who worked with the Beaver. He was born in Manitoba in Canada in 1848. In 1876 he established a CMS mission and Indian children training school at Fort Vermilion, under the name of Unjaga Mission. He learnt and analysed the Beaver language and translated the Gospel of Mark into Beaver. In the mid 1880s he visited England where he had his work in the Beaver language printed. In 1886 Garrioch returned to mission work among the Beaver Indians. In 1892 he returned to Manitoba. In 1905 he retired from active work and settled at Portage-le-Prairie (Portage La Prairie) in Manitoba. In 1925 he wrote 2 autobiographical accounts of his life called The Far and Furry North and in 1929 A Hatchet Mark in Duplicate. He died in 1934.
In 1885 the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) published a Primer and a Vocabulary in the Beaver Indian Language. In 1886 SPCK published a Manual of Devotion in the Beaver Indian Language and also published his Gospel of Mark in syllabic characters with syllabarium, supplementary syllabarium, chapter headings and illustrations. In 1886 the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) published his Gospel of Mark in Roman characters without the illustrations. This has been digitised and is now freely available online on YouVersion and BibleSearch.
In 2004-2011, the language as spoken by the elders of the Beaver First Nations communities in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada was collected as part of the DoBeS Beaver documentation project. The intent was to document an endangered language from a place names' perspective, collecting place names along with stories of culturally relevant locations and personal migration stories, allowing for the exploration of spatial expressions in the language. These materials, along with other grammatical and pedagogical items, are held in the DoBeS Archive and are available for download, subject to agreeing to the terms of access.
Consonants
Dane-zaa has 35 consonants:
Vowels
Dane-zaa has 10 phonemic vowels.
Two vowels contrast oral and nasal qualities.