Southern Carrier, Lower Carrier or locally is an endangered dialect group of the

Athabaskan Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, ...

Carrier language The Dakelh () 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 F ...

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, Canada.

Classification

Dialects

The dialects belonging to Southern Carrier roughly correspond to those to the south of Fort St. James. The group is divided into two subgroups, Fraser/Nechakoh and Blackwater which are further subdivided into individual dialects. The Fraser/Nechakoh subdivision of Southern Carrier includes the Lheidli T'enneh Band, Lheidli, Saik'uz First Nation, Saik'uz, Nadleh Whut'en First Nation, Nadleh, Nautey, Stelakoh, Saik'uz First Nation, Stoney Creek, Prince George and Cheslatta Carrier Nation, Cheslatta dialects. The Blackwater division includes the Anahim Lake, Red Bluff First Nation, Red Bluff, Nazko First Nation, Nazko, Kluskus First Nation, Kluskus, and Ulkatcho First Nation, Ulkatcho dialects.

Usage

According to a 2016 census conducted by the Government of Canada, there were 1,270 fluent speakers of the Carrier language. Among the 1,270 speakers, 1,045 have the language as a single mother tongue and 225 have the language as one of their mother tongues.

Grammar

Southern Carrier has an extremely extensive and productive system of noun classifications. It has multiple classification subsystems and they can take place in the same sentence or same verb.

Language learning

FirstVoices Website

FirstVoices is an online Indigenous language, indigenous languages archiving and learning resource administered by the First Peoples' Cultural Council of British Columbia, Canada. Dakelh/Southern Carrier language is one of the languages documented on the website. Information on alphabets, words, phrases, songs, and stories are available. Both orthography and voice recordings are provided on the website. Games and a kids portal are also available for pre-readers to engage with the language.

FirstVoices App

The Nazko-Dakelh mobile application has a bilingual dictionary and a collection of Dakelh/Southern Carrier language phrases that are archived on the FirstVoices website. It is available for free on bot
Apple
an
Android
mobile operating systems.

References

External links

Southern Carrier / Dakelh Language on FirstVoices

Lheidli dictionary

First Nations languages in Canada Endangered Dené–Yeniseian languages Dakelh Northern Athabaskan languages {{IndigenousAmerican-lang-stub