DENINU KU'E/FORT RESOLUTION - Work is underway - and has been for about a year - to create a dictionary for the Chipewyan language as spoken in Fort Resolution.

Tom Unka is one of 10 elders involved in developing a dictionary for the Chipewyan language as spoken in Fort Resolution. - photo courtesy of South Slave Divisional Education Council

"Right now, we're at 107 pages, so we've done a lot of work in a year here," said Tom Unka, one of 10 elders contributing their knowledge of the Chipewyan language to the dictionary - an initiative of the South Slave Divisional Education Council (SSDEC).

Unka believes the dictionary will help those wanting to learn the language in Fort Resolution.

"It's mostly retained with my age group and older," said the 60-year-old of the current state of the language in Fort Resolution. "Unfortunately, the younger people, the next generation down from me, they hardly speak the language. They probably could understand it, but to speak it I think they would have a lot of difficulties right now."

Brent Kaulback, the assistant superintendent with the education district, said the organization was approached by some elders and community members several years ago after the K'atlodeeche Topical Dictionary for the South Slavey language was published.

"A number of people said, 'When are you going to publish a dictionary for the Chipewyan language?'" he recalled. "So based on that, I explored the topic with some elders and with the school, and the general consensus was let's actually do the same kind of process."

Kaulback said Chipewyan is at a critical level in Fort Resolution and its only chance of survival is preserving the language the elders have and using whatever can be created from that - dictionaries, books and other resources - as the basis to grow the language.

Deninu School is doing a marvellous job of instilling in students a desire to speak their language, he said. "So I'm very hopeful that this kind of project, combined with a passion for the language on the part of the instructors and on the part of the kids, will help carry that language to a point where it can survive and thrive. This is an integral part of keeping it alive."

Kaulback said, since last January, five or six week-long meetings have been held with the elders, who are joined by an instructor from Deninu School and a linguist.

The elders are committed and dedicated to the project, he said. "They really recognize the seriousness of what they're doing and the importance of what they're doing."

The project uses the same word list as for the K'atlodeeche dictionary.

Unka said the elders are making an effort to preserve the language in its traditional form.

"Right now, the people are using a lot of shortcuts," he explained. "What we're trying to do is bring that back to the old way of saying it, the right pronunciation, so the kids can at least learn that instead of going the shortcut with some of the words."

However, Unka said it is hard to get away from some words that have infiltrated the Chipewyan language, especially from French.

Those new words include cup, coffee, tea and radio, he said. "We don't have words for that so we're going to have to use some of these borrowed words."

The dictionary project is being supported by approximately $40,000 in government funding obtained through the Dene Cultural Institute, along with money from the SSDEC.

When completed, the dictionary will have English to Chipewyan translations for between 4,000 and 5,000 words. It will incorporate the 400 to 500 common words included in a picture dictionary previously created in Fort Resolution.

"What we're doing with this dictionary, as opposed to the one that we did with K'atlodeeche, we want it to be a much more usable tool," Kaulback said, adding it will contain conversational phrases and various verb forms, as well as a CD and a version on a website.

By March, a draft of the dictionary should be online so people can make suggestions for words to be included.

The printed version of perhaps 500 to 700 books will be made available to

Deninu School and schools elsewhere, and provided to community members in Fort Resolution.

Kaulback said the dictionary should be published in the summer and be ready for the next school year.

Chipewyan dialects vary in different areas of the NWT, especially in Lutsel K'e, Kaulback said. "There are quite a few different sounds in the Lutsel K'e dialect as opposed to Fort Resolution."

Kaulback said another project may be undertaken in the future to create a dictionary for the Lutsel K'e dialect.

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