Dane-zaa, known in the language as Dane-zaa Ẕáágéʔ and once known as Beaver, is an Athabascan language of western Canada. It means "people-regular language." About one-tenth of the Dane-zaa people speak the language. Beaver is closely related to the languages spoken by neighboring Athabaskan groups, such as Slavey, Sekani, Sarcee, Chipewyan, and Kaska.
Dialects
The dialects of Dane-zaa language are two main groups. Dialects that developed high tone from stem-final glottalic consonants are called high-marked and dialects that developed low tonelow-marked. From north to south are as follows:
A 1991 estimate gave 300 total speakers out of a population of 600 Dane-zaa people. As of 2007, Dane-zaa Zaageʔ was spoken "in eastern British Columbia and in northwestern Alberta, Rock Lane, and Child Lake." A 2011 CD by Garry Oker features traditional Beaver language chanting with world beat and country music.
Language Loss
English is now the first language of most Dane-zaa children, and of many adults in the Dane-zaa communities. Dane-zaa Zaageʔ was the primary language until the grandparents and parents started to send their children to school in the 1950s. English only became dominant in the 1980s. Because the language is orally based, Dane-zaa Zaageʔ becomes increasingly endangered as the fluent speakers pass away. The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was a contributor in language loss due to the fact that it decimated the Dane-zaa population, claiming the lives of hunters, mothers and the older population. To fully recover from this, it took several generations. Because fluency lay in the older generation, the epidemic played a part in that loss of language. The loss of Suu Na Chii K'chinge, the traditional meeting place for the Dane-zaa, along with residential schools, resulted in the loss of language. As schools were built on the reserves, a lack of teachers due to the isolation as well as them being forbidden to write about the poverty and realities of colonial violence added to that loss.
Language Documentation
The Rev Alfred Campbell Garrioch was a Christian missionary of the Anglican Church Missionary Society who worked with the Beaver. He was born in Manitoba in Canada in 1848. In 1876 he established a Church Mission Society mission and Indian children training school at Fort Vermilion, under the name of Unjaga Mission. He learnt and analysed the Beaver language and translated the Gospel of Mark into Beaver. In the mid 1880s he visited England where he had his work in the Beaver language printed. In 1886 Garrioch returned to mission work among the Beaver Indians. In 1892 he returned to Manitoba. In 1905 he retired from active work and settled at Portage-le-Prairie in Manitoba. In 1925 he wrote 2 autobiographical accounts of his life called The Far and Furry North and in 1929 A Hatchet Mark in Duplicate. He died in 1934. In 1885 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published a Primer and a Vocabulary in the Beaver Indian Language. In 1886 SPCK published a Manual of Devotion in the Beaver Indian Language and also published his Gospel of Mark in syllabic characters with syllabarium, supplementary syllabarium, chapter headings and illustrations. In 1886 the British and Foreign Bible Society published his Gospel of Mark as "Ootech oochu Takehniya-Tinkles St. Mark" in Roman characters without the illustrations. This has been digitised and is now freely available online on YouVersion and BibleSearch. In 1959 and throughout the 1960s, anthropologist Robin Ridington began working with the Doig River First Nation on the documentation and recording of Dane-zaa. He returned in 1978 with his second wife Jillian Ridington and they worked with Howard Broomfield and linguist Billy Attachie. His daughter Amber Ridington collaborated with Dane-zaa youth and elders to create Dane Wajich: Dane-zaa Stories and Songs-Dreamers and the Land, a virtual library that has made Dane-zaa pronunciations and other resources on Dane-zaa culture available to the public. In 1968 John chapter 3 was translated by Marshall and Jean Holdstock and published as "Lǫ́ǫ́se nadááse" by Scripture Gift Mission. In 2004-2011, the language as spoken by the elders of the Beaver First Nations communities in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada was collected as part of the DoBeS Beaver documentation project. The intent was to document an endangered language from a place names' perspective, collecting place names along with stories of culturally relevant locations and personal migration stories, allowing for the exploration of spatial expressions in the language. These materials, along with other grammatical and pedagogical items, are held in the DoBeS Archive and are available for download, subject to agreeing to the terms of access.
Phonemes
Consonants
Dane-zaa has 35 consonants:
Vowels
Dane-zaa has 10 phonemic vowels. Two vowels contrast oral and nasal qualities.
Grammar
Dane-zaa has gender-neutral pronouns where less importance is put on the person. His/Her/It: ma- His/Her own: da-
