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The Sekani language or Tse’khene is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the Sekani people of north-central British Columbia, Canada.

Sekani
Tse'khene
Native to	Canada
Region	British Columbia
Ethnicity	1,410 Sekani people (2014, FPCC)[1]
Native speakers	200, 14% of ethnic population (2016 census)[2]
Language family	Dené–Yeniseian? Na-Dené Athabaskan Northern Athabaskan Sekani
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sek
Glottolog	seka1250
ELP	Tse'khene (Sekani)
Sekani is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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Phonology

Consonants

Sekani has 33 consonants:

		Bilabial	Alveolar			Post- Alveolar	Velar		Glottal
			plain	sibilant	lateral		plain	labial
Stop	voiceless	p	t	ts	tɬ	tʃ	k	kʷ
	aspirated	(pʰ)	tʰ	tsʰ	tɬʰ	tʃʰ	kʰ	kʷʰ
	ejective		tʼ	tsʼ	tɬʼ	tʃʼ	kʼ	kʼʷ	ʔ
Nasal		m	n
Fricative- Approximant[lower-alpha 1]	voiceless			s	ɬ	ç	x	xʷ	h
	voiced			z	l	j	ɣ	w

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		a

Tone

Sekani has two tones: low and high. High tone is the more common tone. Syllables phonologically marked for tone are low.

Nasalization

Nasalization of vowels is phonemic and so changes the meaning.

Sample words

[3] In the practical writing system used here for the Kwadacha Tsek'ene dialect, u represents the mid-central vowel, and oo represents the high back rounded vowel. An apostrophe represents a glottal stop, and an ogonek under a vowel represents nasalization.

• dune man; person
• tlįį dog
• wudzįįh caribou
• yus snow
• chǫ rain
• k’wus cloud
• kwùn fire
• ’įįbèh summer
• too water
• mun lake
• nun land
• tselh axe
• ʼukèʼ foot
• ’àtse my grandfather
• ’àtsǫǫ my grandmother
• lhìghè’ one
• lhèkwudut’e two
• tadut’e three
• dįįdut’e four
• ǫ yes
• Tlįį duchę̀’ ’ehdasde January
• Dahyusè’ nùkehde wìlę February
• Nùtsʼiide March
• ʼUtʼǫ̀ʼ kùnuyehde May
• Jìje dinììdulh July
• Yhììh nunutsunde wìlę August
• Yhììh ukudeh’àsde September
• ’Udììtl’ǫh ’uwit’į̀į̀h October
• Yus ’ut’į̀į̀h November
• Khuye ’uwììjàh December

Notes

Bibliography

• Hargus, Sharon. (1988). The Lexical Phonology of Sekani. (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics). New York: Garland Publishers. ISBN 0-8240-5187-4
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.

Articles

• Hargus, Sharon (2009) Effects on consonant duration in Fort Ware Tsek'ene. Presented at Athabaskan/Dene Languages Conference, Eugene, OR. PDF of slides, PDF of references.
• Hargus, Sharon (2009) "Causatives and transitionals in Kwadacha Tsek'ene." (slides) Presented at the Athabaskan Languages Conference, Berkeley, CA. [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853 and Kwadacha Education Society]
• Hargus, Sharon (2009) "Phonetic vs. phonological rounding in Athabaskan languages." PDF of slides, PDF of references. Presented at LabPhon 12, Albuquerque, NM. (reposted July 16, 2010). The article will appear in Journal of Laboratory Phonology 3:163-193.

External links

• First Voices Kwadacha Tsek'ene Community Portal
• Sekani entry on First Nations Languages of British Columbia site
• Bibliography of Sekani Linguistics
• Map of Northwest Coast First Nations (including Sekani)
• OLAC resources in and about the Sekani language

На других языках

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- [en] Sekani language

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[fr] Sekani

Le sekani ou tseʼkhene est une langue athapascane septentrionale parlée par les Sekanis (en) dans le Nord de la Colombie britannique au Canada. Selon Statistique Canada, en 2021, le sekani est la langue maternelle de 60 personnes[1] au Canada.

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[ru] Секани

Секани (Sekani; Tsek’ehne, Tsek’hene)[3] — почти исчезнувший северо-атабаскский язык, на котором говорит народ секани (англ.), проживающий в общине Искут, Тахлтан, некоторые в общине Бивер на реке Профет, также в общинах Форт-Уэйр (ныне Квадача) и Форт-Маклеод на севере центральной части штата Британская Колумбия в Канаде.

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