Sekani
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Sikanni is the name of an Athabaskan First Nations people and language in the northern interior of British Columbia. Their territory includes the Finlay and Parsnip River drainages of the Rocky Mountain Trench. The neighbors of the Sekani are the Babine, Dakelh, Dunneza (Beaver), Slavey, Kaska, and Tahltan, all Athabaskan peoples, to the north and west. To the south their neighbours are the Kinbasket and Secwepemc (Shuswap) peoples, who are Plains and Interior Salish peoples, respectively. In the past few centuries they have also had extensive contact with the Plains Cree, and were formerly in the upper North Thompson valley, until driven out by the grandfather of the famous Chief Nicola.
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[edit] Culture
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[edit] Language
[edit] Sounds
[edit] Consonants
Sekani has 33 consonants:
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Post- Alveolar |
Velar | Glottal | ||||
| central | lateral | plain | labial | |||||
| Stop | unaspirated | p | t | k | kʷ | |||
| aspirated | (pʰ) | tʰ | kʰ | kʷʰ | ||||
| ejective | tʼ | kʼ | kʼʷ | ʔ | ||||
| Affricate | unaspirated | ʦ | tɬ | ʧ | ||||
| aspirated | ʦʰ | tɬʰ | ʧʰ | |||||
| ejective | ʦʼ | tɬʼ | ʧʼ | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||
| Fricative- Approximant* |
voiceless | s | ɬ | ç | x | xʷ | h | |
| voiced | z | l | j | ɣ | w | |||
- *Sekani, like other Athabaskan languages, does not contrast fricatives with approximants.
[edit] Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Low | a |
[edit] Synonymy
Sekani people call themselves [tsek'ene] or [tθek'ene] depending on dialect, both meaning "people on the rocks". "Sekani" is an anglicization of this term. Other forms occasionally found, especially in older sources, are Secunnie, Siccanie, Sikani, and the French Sékanais.
[edit] Ethnologue/ISO/DIS 639-3 Code
SEK
[edit] External links
- Sekani entry on First Nations Languages of British Columbia site
- Bibliography of Sekani Linguistics
- Map of Northwest Coast First Nations (including Sekani)
- Ethnologue entry
[edit] Bibliography
- Hargus, Sharon. (1988). The lexical phonology of Sekani. Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Garland Publishers. ISBN.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN (hbk); ISBN-X.
- Lanoue, Guy. (1992). Brothers. The Politics of Violence among the Sekani of northern British Columbia. Oxford: Berg Publishers Ltd.
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Categories: Articles with sections needing expansion | Indigenous languages of the Americas stubs | Indigenous peoples of North America stubs | Northern Athabaskan languages | Languages of Canada | Endangered languages | First Nations in British Columbia | Indigenous languages of the North American Subarctic | Language articles without language code
