MultiTree:

Name: Chipewyan Type: Language Alternate Names: Montagnais; Dene Suline; Sluacus-tinneh; Dene Soun'line; Dene Spoken in: Canada Number of speakers: 9,030. Ethnic population: 6,000 (Krauss 1995) (Ethnologue) Number of speakers: 8195 (UNESCO) Number of speakers: 4000 (World Oral Literature Project) Code: chp Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Families: Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit (Eyak-Athabaskan, Na-Dene, Dene-Yeniseian) Parent Subgroup: Dene; Hare-Chipewyan (harc) Brief Description: "Chipewyan (Dene Soun'line) is an Athabaskan language of the Dene complex spoken in a number of communities scattered across a large area in the forest and tundra of northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the eastern Northwest Territories. Among the principal settlements are Cold Lake and Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, and Fort Resolution and Lutselk'e, NWT. Making an accurate estimate of the number of first-language Chipewyan speakers is difficult because many are also speakers of Cree. The Government of Canada estimates a total of 1,865 speakers, the majority in Alberta and Saskatchewan. A recent survey at Cold Lake found only 200 fluent speakers out of 1,800-2,000 Band members, but the proportion is much higher in some remote communities such as Wollaston Lake, Saskatchewan, where most children are reported to be more fluent in Chipewyan than in English. In the Northwest Territories, where Chipewyan has official language status, there are 370 speakers (185 of whom use the language at home) in the communities of Lutselk'e, Ft. Smith, and Ft. Resolution." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 12

Endangerment Status

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UNESCO Status: Vulnerable Ethnologue Status: Not listed Sutherland's Red List: Not listed