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Concept information

Preferred term

Chilcotin  

Definition

  • Chilcotin or Tŝilhqotʼin is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in British Columbia by the Tsilhqotʼin people. The name Chilcotin is the anglicized form of the Chilcotin name for themselves, literally ‘people of the red ochre river’. Chilcotin has 47 consonants, likely the largest number within the Athabaskan family. It belongs to the Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit language family. Edward Sapir originally constructed the term Na-Dene to refer to a combined family of Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida (the existence of the Eyak language was not known to him at the time). However, Haida is now generally considered a language isolate.

Entry terms

  • Tsilhqot’in

Identifier

  • CLC

Notation

  • clc

URI

http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/language/CLC

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