Tagish is an extinct language spoken by the Tagish or Carcross-Tagish, a

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people that historically lived in the

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and

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Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. The name Tagish derives from ''/ta:gizi dene/'', or "Tagish people", which is how they refer to themselves, where is a place name meaning "it (spring ice) is breaking up.Yinka Déné Language Institute. (2006). The Tagish Language. https://www.ydli.org/langs/tagish.htm The language is a Northern Athabaskan language, closely related to

Tahltan The Tahltan or Nahani are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group who live in northern British Columbia around Telegraph Creek, Dease Lake, and Iskut. The Tahltan constitute the fourth division of the ''Nahan ...

and Kaska. The three languages are often grouped together as Tahltan-Kaska-Tagish; the three languages are considered dialects of the same language by some.Alderete, J., Blenkiron, A., &Thompson, J. E. (2014). Some notes on stem phonology and the development of affricates in Tahltan (Northern Athabaskan). Ms., Simon Fraser University and Northwest Community College. As of 2004, there was only 1 native fluent speaker of Tagish documented: Lucy Wren (Agaymā/Ghùch Tlâ).Greenaway, J. (2006, November 08). Tagish First Voices Project. http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Tagish/welcome She died in 2008.

Classification

Tagish is among many other languages within the large language family of

Na-Dene languages Na-Dene ( ; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now genera ...

, which includes another group of indigenous North American languages called the Athabaskan languages. The Northern Athabaskan languages are often considered to be part of a complex of languages entitled Tagish-Tahltan-Kaska. The languages in this complex have an extremely similar lexicon and grammar but differ in systems of

obstruent An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well ...

s. Known alternatively as Dene K'e, Tagish is also closely related to the neighboring languages Tahltan, Kaska, and Southern Tutchone.

Geographic distribution

The Tagish people make their territory in southern

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and northern

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in Canada, most specifically at Tagish, which lies between Marsh Lake and Tagish Lake, and Carcross, located between Bennett and Nares Lake. The language was used most frequently in the Lewes and Teslin plateaus.

History

The culture of the Tagish people has its roots in both the coastal Indian cultures and those from the interior (

Tlingit The Tlingit or Lingít ( ) are Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. , they constitute two of the 231 federally recognized List of Alaska Native tribal entities, Tribes of Alaska. Most Tlingit are Alaska Natives; ...

and

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

, Athapaskan respectively). Trade and travel across the

Chilkoot pass Chilkoot Pass (el. ) is a high mountain pass through the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains in the U.S. state of Alaska and British Columbia, Canada. It is the highest point along the Chilkoot Trail that leads from Dyea, Alaska to Bennett ...

contributed to the mixing of these cultures. In the 19th and early 20th centuries,

-speaking peoples began to move in from the coast and intermarry with the native Tagish-speaking population. By the time outsiders first made contact in the 1880s, the majority of the people were bilingual, and the Tlingit language had replaced Tagish as the language of the majority. Tagish became less common partially because native traditions were domesticated and suppressed in writing by the colonial administration. The most significant impact on the decline of nearly every native language in Canada came when aboriginal children were forced to attend residential schools where they were forbidden to speak their own languages. After the Yukon Gold Rush in 1898, English became the majority language of the area. As the majority of children attended the English-only Chooutla Anglican school nearby, fluency in the native languages began to be lost. Language courses began to be reintroduced in the 1970s, but the programs had little funding and were not comparable to the French or English programs present. More recently, political awareness has led to movements to gain constitutional provisions for the language, as well as a greater focus on in-school programs, language conferences, and public awareness. For example, beginning in 2004, Southern Tutchone and Tagish languages were being revitalized and protected through an on-line approach called FirstVoices. The federal government signed an agreement giving the territory $4.25 million over five years to "preserve, develop and enhance aboriginal languages", however Tagish was not one of the offered native language programs. Ken McQueen stated that despite efforts, the language will likely become extinct after the last fluent Tagish speaker dies.

Tagish on First Voices

FirstVoices is an indigenous language computer database and web-based teaching and development tool. Tagish was one of the first to be added to the FirstVoices digital multimedia archive of endangered indigenous languages. Resources on the site include sound files of name pronunciation, word lists, and some children's books written in the language. This language documentation is intended to create a holistic platform where identity, oral tradition, elders' knowledge and the centrality of the land can all be intertwined. On the Tagish FirstVoices page, there are a total of 36 words and 442 phrases archived and sound recordings of the alphabet. To provide a cultural context, there are also a community slide show and art gallery section. This website includes greetings from a multitude of elders complete with contact information about the website's contributors.

Notable people

Angela Sidney was a prominent activist for the use and reclamation of her Tagish language and heritage in the southern Yukon Territory. Born in 1902, her heritage was Tagish on her father's side and Tlingit on her mother's side. Sidney's accomplishments include working with Julie Cruikshank, documenting and authoring traditional stories as well as becoming a member of the

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in 1986. Sidney died in 1991. Lucy Wren was the last known fluent speaker. She was actively involved in the recordings and stories used on the First Voices website including the "Our Elders Statement" before passing in 2008. This work by Lucy Wren has been continued by her son Norman James as he works to record more language and culture of the Tagish and Tlingit people for the Yukon Native Language Centre and the First Voices website.

Phonology

The Tagish language includes aspiration, glottalization, nasal sounds, resonance, and tones.Krauss, M. E., & Golla, V. K. (1978). Northern Athapaskan languages. In Handbook of North American Indians: Subarctic (Vol. 6, pp. 67-85). Government Printing Office 1978. Tagish is characterized by the simplest stem-initial consonant system of the Northern Athabaskan languages, has a conservative vowel system and conserves stem-final consonants. Final

glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent cons ...

is lost. Constricted vowels are pronounced with low

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

. The Tagish language includes nouns, verbs, and particles. Particles and nouns are single, sometimes compounded,

morphemes A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

, but the difference is that nouns can be inflected and particles cannot. Verbs are the most complex class in this language because their stemmed morphemes have many prefixes which indicate inflectional and derivational categories. The total inventory of

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

present in Tagish includes:

Consonants

Vowels

The short vowels /i, e, a, o, u/; as well as their long counterparts /iː, eː, aː, oː, uː/.

Long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not d ...

are denoted with a macron as follows: .

Nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...

s are denoted by a Hook (diacritic), hook as follows: .

Tone

High tone is marked with (v́) on short vowels and (v́v) on long vowels while low tones remain unmarked.

Orthography

The language makes use of the Latin writing system.

Vocabulary

Some women's names contain the nasalized prefix ''Maa'' which translates directly to "mother of."

References

External links

*Yukon Native Language Centre'
introduction to the Tagish Language
**Audio lessons. https://web.archive.org/web/20080110174009/http://www.ynlc.ca/materials/lessons/wrenl/index.html ** Audio storybooks. http://www.ynlc.ca/materials/stories/tg.html
OLAC resources in and about the Tagish language
*The Tagish First Voices Project. http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Tagish/welcome **Word list. http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Tagish/words **Phrases. http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Tagish/phrase-books **Audio files of First Words. http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Tagish *Audio files, word lists, and other resources at Glottlog. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/tagi1240 *List of English-Tagish word lists. Renato, F. B. (2014, March 21). Freelang Tagish-English dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/tagish.php * * * *The Endangered Languages Project. http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/1448 {{authority control Northern Athabaskan languages Indigenous languages of the North American Subarctic First Nations languages in Canada First Nations in Yukon Endangered Athabaskan languages 2008 disestablishments in Alaska Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 2000s