La Loche and Clearwater River Dene Nation were chosen for the project. (Tourism Saskatchewan)

By Derek Cornet

language retention

Northern communities selected for Dene linguistic research project

Jul 27, 2020 | 4:01 PM

A four-year project examining the Dene language in two northern Saskatchewan communities will hopefully begin next month.

That’s according to University of Saskatchewan Professor of Linguistics Olga Lovick, who will be leading the project in La Loche and Clearwater River Dene Nation. She said those two communities are unique in the fact they are one of the few places where children grow up learning to speak the language.

“We noticed there’s quite a bit of variation within those communities, specifically that young speakers speak quite differently than older speakers,” Lovick said.

There are two goals to the project with the first being the development of materials like dictionaries and read-along books in their own dialect. The second goal is to look at Dene from a linguistic point of view as to why there is variation within the community.

“The Dene language is quite complex and we suspect that young speakers speak differently than older speakers simply because they don’t know the entire language system yet, and that is something that comes only as speakers get older,” Lovick said. “The other option is this is actually due to attrition, possibly even language loss [and] because of the impact of colonization, the language is changing.”

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Over the next four years, Lovick explained 100 hours of Dene will be recorded by community members trained as research assistants or transcribers. She also noted the project is working with the local language and culture committee, who will set the protocols and provide speakers to participate.

Lovick is hopeful the project will run for more than four years as follow-up projects will likely be needed to answer the questions researchers have. The current project is funded through a grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

“The community is so involved with language work and have so much interest in language,” Lovick said.

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno