Carrier language
| Carrier | |
|---|---|
| Dakeł (ᑕᗸᒡ) | |
| Native to | Canada |
| Region | Central Interior of British Columbia |
| Ethnicity | 9,350 Carrier people (2014, FPCC) |
|
Native speakers
|
680 (2014, FPCC) |
|
NAPA Dakelh Syllabics |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either: crx – Carrier caf – Southern Carrier |
| Glottolog | carr1248 |
The 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 is the usual English name. People who are referred to as Carrier speak two related languages. One, Babine-Witsuwit'en is sometimes referred to as Northern Carrier. The other, Carrier proper, includes what are sometimes referred to as Central Carrier and Southern Carrier.
All dialects of Carrier have essentially the same consonant system, which is shown in this chart.
There are three series of stops and affricates: aspirated, unaspirated (written voiced in the practical orthography), and ejective.
/r/ is not native to the language but has been introduced by loans from French and English. /f/ occurs in a single loanword "coffee". The labialized voiced velar fricative /ɣʷ/ is found only in the speech of the most conservative speakers; for most speakers it has merged with /w/. The palatal nasal /ɲ/ occurs allophonically before other palatal consonants; otherwise, it occurs only in a small set of 2nd-person singular morphemes. For most speakers it has become an [n̩j] sequence, with a syllabic [n]. Similarly, the velar nasal /ŋ/ occurs allophonically before other velar consonants but is found distinctively in one or two morphemes in each dialect.
Carrier once had a dental/alveolar (or laminal/apical) distinction, attested in the earliest grammatical treatise of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. However, by 1976 this had been leveled to the present alveolar series among younger speakers, and in 1981 the dental/laminal series (marked by underlining the consonant) was said to be found in only the "very oldest speakers". Poser (2005) states that it is found in only the most conservative speech. In even the earliest description, there is evidence of the distinction being neutralized.
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