The Tsuutʼina language, or ''Tsúùtʼínà Gūnáhà''
(and formerly known as ''Sarcee'' or ''Sarsi''),
is spoken by the people of the
Tsuutʼina Nation
The Tsuutʼina Nation (), also spelled Tsuu Tʼina or Tsu Tʼina, is a First Nation band government in Alberta, Canada. The Tsuu T'ina Nation 145 reserve is located directly west of Calgary, with its eastern edge directly adjacent to t ...
, whose
reserve and community is near
Calgary, Alberta
Calgary () is a major city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a Metropolitan area, metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the List of ...
. It belongs to the
Athabaskan language family, which also include the
Navajo
The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language.
The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...
and
Chiricahua
Chiricahua ( ) is a band of Apache Native Americans.
Based in the Southern Plains and Southwestern United States, the Chiricahua historically shared a common area, language, customs, and intertwined family relations with their fellow Apaches. ...
of the south, and the
Dene Suline and
Tłı̨chǫ
The Tłı̨chǫ (, ) people, sometimes spelled Tlicho and also known as the Dogrib, are a Dene First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living in the Northwest Territories of Canada.
Name
The name ''Dogrib' ...
of the north.
Nomenclature
The name ''Tsuutʼina'' comes from the Tsuutʼina self designation ''Tsúùtʼínà'', meaning "many people", "nation tribe", or "people among the beavers".
''Sarcee'' is a deprecated
exonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
from
Siksiká.
Language revitalization
Tsuutʼina is a critically
endangered language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead langua ...
, with only 150 speakers, 80 of whom speak it as their mother tongue, according to the 2016 Canadian census.
The Tsuutʼina Nation has created th
Tsuutʼina Gunaha Institutewith the intention of creating new fluent speakers. This includes full K-4 immersion education at schools on the Nation and placing stop signs in the Tsuutʼina language at intersections in the Tsuutʼina Nation.
Tsuut’ina Nation displaying Indigenous language stop signs
/ref>
Phonology
Consonants
The consonants of Tsuutʼina are listed below, with symbols from the standard orthography in brackets:
Vowels
There are four phonemically distinct vowel qualities in Tsuutʼina: /i a ɒ u/, represented〈i a o u〉. While /a/ and /ɒ/ are fairly constant, /i u/ can vary considerably.
Vowels are also distinguished by length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with Dimension (physical quantity), dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a Base unit (measurement), base unit for length is chosen, ...
and 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
* ...
, similar to other Athabaskan languages, so that Tsuutʼina, taking the total number of vowel phonemes to 24 (i.e. / ī í ì īː íː ìː ā á à āː áː àː ɒ̄ ɒ́ ɒ̀ ū ú ù ūː úː ùː ɒ̄ː ɒ́ː ɒ̀ː /).
* long vowels are written doubled, e.g., aa
* high tone is marked with an acute accent
The acute accent (), ,
is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
, e.g., á
* low tone is marked with a grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...
, e.g., à
* mid tone is marked with a macron, e.g., ā
Nouns
Nouns in Tsuutʼina are not declined, and most plural nouns are not distinguished from singular nouns. However, kinship terms are distinguished between singular and plural form by adding the suffix -ká (or -kúwá) to the end of the noun or by using the word ''yìná''.
List of nouns
People
* husband - ''kòlà''
* man, human - ''dìná''
* wife - ''tsʼòyá''
* woman - ''tsʼìkā''
* grandmother - ''is’su''
* grandfather - ''is’sa''
* mother - ''in’na''
* father - ''it’ta''
Nature
*Buffalo, cow - ''xāní''
*Cloud - ''nàkʼús''
*Dog - ''tłí(chʼà)''
*Fire - ''kù''
*Mud, dirt - ''gútłʼìs''
*Snow - ''zòs''
*Water - ''tú''
Words and phrases
*my name is (..) - ''sizi''
Noun possession
Nouns can exist in free form or possessed form. When in possessed form, the prefixes listed below can be attached to nouns to show possession. For example, ''más'', "knife", can be affixed with the 1st person prefix to become ''sìmázàʼ'' or "my knife". Note that ''-mázàʼ'' is the possessed form of the noun.
Some nouns, like ''más'', as shown above, can alternate between free form and possessed form. A few nouns, like ''zòs'', "snow", are never possessed and exist only in free form. Other nouns, such as ''-tsìʼ'', "head", have no free form and must always be possessed.
Typical possession prefixes
*1st person - si-
*2nd person - ni-
*3rd person - mi-
*4th person (Athabascan) - ɣi-
Bibliography
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1971a). "Vowels and Tone in Sarcee", ''Language'' 47, 164–179.
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1971b). "Morphophonemics of Two Sarcee Classifiers", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 37, 152–155.
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1971d). "Sarcee Numerals", ''Anthropological Linguistics'' 13, 435–441.
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1972). "Sarcee Verb Paradigms", Mercury Series Paper No. 2. Ottawa: National Museum of Man.
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1973b). "Complementation in Sarcee". npublished?*Cook, Eung-Do. (1978b). "The Synchronic and Diachronic Status of Sarcee ɣy", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 43, 259–268.
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1978c). "Palatalizations and Related Rules in Sarcee", in: ''Linguistic Studies of Native Canada'', eds. Cook, E.-D. and Kaye, J. 19–36. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1978d). "The Verb 'BE' in Sarcee", ''Amerindia'' 3, 105–113.
*Cook, Eung-Do. (1984). ''A Sarcee Grammar''. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. .
*Goddard, P. E. (1915). "Sarcee Texts", ''University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology'' 11, 189–277.
*Honigmann, J. (1956). "Notes on Sarsi Kin Behavior", ''Anthropologica'' 11, 17–38.
*Hofer, E. (1973). "Phonological Change in Sarcee". npublished?*Hofer, E. (1974). "Topics in Sarcee Syntax". M.A. Thesis. The University of Calgary.
*Hoijer, H. and Joël, J.. (1963). "Sarcee Nouns", in ''Studies in the Athabaskan Languages'', eds. Hoijer, H. et al., 62–75.
*Li, F.-K.. (1930). "A Study of Sarcee Verb Stems", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 6, 3–27.
*Sapir, E. (1924). "Personal Names Among the Sarcee Indians", ''American Anthropologist'' n.s. 26, 108–199.
*Sapir, E. (1925). "Pitch Accent in Sarcee, An Athabaskan language", ''Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris'' n.s. 17, 185–205.
*Sarcee Culture Program. 1979. ''Tsu Tʼina and the Buffalo''. Calgary.
See also
* Tsuutʼina Nation
The Tsuutʼina Nation (), also spelled Tsuu Tʼina or Tsu Tʼina, is a First Nation band government in Alberta, Canada. The Tsuu T'ina Nation 145 reserve is located directly west of Calgary, with its eastern edge directly adjacent to t ...
References
External links
The Verb «Be» in Sarcee
The Tsuut'ina Gunaha Institute
{{Languages of Canada
Tsuut'ina
Northern Athabaskan languages
Indigenous languages of the North American Plains
First Nations languages in Canada