Orthography of Tłį Chǫ (Dogrib)

The orthography of Tłį Chǫ (Dogrib) presented on this page is in use by the Dogrib Divisional Board of Education. In bold on the left in the tables is the phoneme in Tłį Chǫ (Dogrib) orthography; next to it is the IPA equivalent.

Consonants

Tłį Chǫ has approximately twenty-eight consonant phonemes, depending on dialect and analysis. These are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Tłį Chǫ (Dogrib) Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Lateral	Palato-alveolar	Velar		Glottal
		Labial	Alveolar	Lateral	Palato-alveolar	Plain	Labialized	Glottal
Nasal		m [m]	n [n]
Stop	Nasalized	mb [mb]	nd [nd]
	Unaspirated	b [b]	d [d]			g [g]		ʼ [ʔ]
	Velar Affrication		t [tx]			k [kx]	kw [kx^w]
	Ejective		tʼ [tʼ]			kʼ [kʼ]
Affricate	Voiced		dz [dz]	dl [dl]	j [dʒ]
	Aspirated		ts [ts^h]	tłʼ [tɬ^h]	ch [tʃ^h]
	Ejective		tsʼ [tsʼ]	tłʼ [tɬʼ]	chʼ [tʃʼ]
Fricative	Voiceless	f [f]	s [s]	ł [ɬ]	sh [ʃ]	x, h [x]		h [h]
Fricative	Voiced	v [v]	z [z]	l [l]	zh [ʒ]	gh [ɣ]	ghw [ɣ^w]
Resonant			r [ɾ~ɹ]		y [j]	w [w]

The t and k sounds are affricates [tx] and [kx], rather than plain aspirated stops, in the Dene languages that we have studied. Only the true affricates tth [tθʰ], ts [tsʰ], ch [tʃʰ] and tł [tɬʰ] are aspirated. You can see and hear this in the examples of these sounds of Tłį Chǫ.

Vowels

There are five phonemic vowel qualities in Tłį Chǫ. These are presented in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Tłį Chǫ (Dogrib) Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i [i]	u [u]
Mid	e [e~ɛ]	o [o]
Low	a [ɑ]

The vowels may also contrast in tone (high versus low), length (long versus short) and nasality (oral versus nasal). The full range of these vowel contrasts is found mainly in the stems, and minimal pairs are not always available. Vowel length especially is hard to determine and may be related to the tone of the syllable.

Tłį Chǫ is orthographically a 'low tone marked language'; this means that high tone is the default tone, whereas low tone is marked on vowels with a grave accent. Contrasts of tone, length and nasality are marked as follows in the orthography:

oo long vowel
ǫ nasal vowel
ò low tone vowel (high tone is unmarked)
ǫ̀ low tone nasal vowel
oò long vowel with a falling tone

Sources

Dogrib Divisional Board of Education (1996). Tłįchǫ Yatiì Enįhtł’è : A Dogrib Dictionary. Rae-Edzo: Dogrib Divisional Board of Education. Available in a revised and expanded form.
Tlicho Dictionary
Tlicho Children’s Dictionary
Multimedia Dictionary of Dogrib
Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Harvey, Chris (2012). LanguageGeek [website]