Dictionary of Tlingit Dictionary of Tlingit Keri Edwards Sealaska Heritage Institute Juneau, Alaska © 2009 by Sealaska Heritage Institute All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-9825786-6-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008939134 Sealaska Heritage Institute One Sealaska Plaza, Suite 301 Juneau, Alaska 99801 907-463-4844 www.sealaskaheritage.org Printing History: First Edition, December 2009 Printing: CreateSpace, Scotts Valley, CA, U.S.A. Front cover design: Kathy Dye Front cover artwork: Robert Hoffmann Book design and computational lexicography: Sean M. Burke Copy editing: Suzanne G. Fox, Red Bird Publishing, Inc., Bozeman, MT Dedication To our teacher and friend, Johnny Marks. Contents 9 Acknowledgements 11 Introduction 45 Tlingit to English 345 English to Tlingit 493 Tlingit Thematic Lexicon 605 Appendix Dictionary of TlingitAcknowledgements Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the consistent hard work of four fluent speakers who served as primary consultants to all Tlingit language information in this dictionary, listed here in alphabetical order: Anita Lafferty John Marks June Pegues Helen Sarabia I express the deepest gratitude to these individuals whose integrity, patience, and good humor have made this project possible and a lot of fun. Kúnáý gunalchéesh yeewháan! Thanks are also due to fluent Tlingit speakers who provided example sentences and/or audio recordings for the dictionary (in addition to those named above), and are listed here in alphabetical order: Bessie Cooley David Katzeek Fred White Very special thanks is owed to Dr. Jeff Leer who served as a consultant to this project, and whose unsurpassed expertise in the Tlingit language has been critical. Dr. Leer graciously made himself available to answer questions, advise decisions, and provide support regularly throughout the compiling of this resource. It would not have been possible without him, and I cannot thank him enough. It is important to note however, that any inconsistencies or errors in this resource are my own, and should not reflect on Dr. Leer or any of the fluent speakers named above. Sealaska Heritage Institute AcknowledgementsDictionary of Tlingit Information included in this resource has come from a variety of sources, including a manuscript dictionary by James Crippen as well as the following previously published dictionaries: Leer, Jeff, Doug Hitch and John Ritter. 2001. Interior Tlingit Noun Dictionary. Yukon Native Language Center. Story, Gillian L. and Constance M. Naish. 1973. Tlingit Verb Dictionary. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center. Twitchell, Lance. 2005. Lingít Dictionary: Northern Dialect 1st ed. Troubled Raven Productions. Special thanks to James Crippen and Lance Twitchell, whose shared electronic files saved the present project much time in the area of data entry. I thank Jessica Chester for her help in organizing the database by assigning words to appropriate semantic categories and assisting in distributing example sentences to relevant entries. I thank Dr. Richard Dauenhauer and Nora Marks- Dauenhauer, whose mentorship and generosity have helped put me in a position to do this work, and who have provided all levels of support on this project. Dr. Jordan Lachler and Sean Burke masterminded the database for this project. I thank them for applying their ingenuity and extreme patience in uniquely designing the program to best suit the Tlingit language. Keri Edwards Juneau, Alaska November 1, 2009 Sealaska Heritage Institute Dictionary of TlingitIntroduction Introduction 1. Adjectives (p14) 8. Postpositions (p17) 2. Adverbs (p14) 9. Pronouns (p18) 3. Demonstratives (p15) 10. Quantifiers (p20) 4. Interjections (p15) 11. Relational Nouns (p21) 5. Nouns (p15) 12. Relational Postpositions (p21) 6. Numerals (p17) 13. Verbs (p21) 7. Particles (p17) 14. References (p43) This is a first edition Tlingit-English dictionary compiled by Keri Edwards for the Sealaska Heritage Institute, made possible by funding from the Administration for Native Americans. This edition was also produced online and in CD-ROM format. A work in progress, this dictionary is incomplete in terms of the number of entries. The goal of this project has been to solve problems such as how to best represent Tlingit verbs, thus laying a foundation for a more comprehensive and accessible noun and verb dictionary for Tlingit. This introduction provides the information necessary to understand and use the print version of the dictionary. In the interest of saving space, the print version contains less detailed information within each word entry than do the CD-ROM and online versions. To access the CD-ROM and online versions of the dictionary, go to the SHI website at www.sealaskaheritage.org. While some of the information in this dictionary comes directly from pre-existing resources, many important additions have been made here. This dictionary has several unique features. 1) It includes nouns and verbs as well as all the minor word categories such as adjectives, adverbs, and interjections in a single resource. 2) For each verb entry, the conjugation prefix is provided, this previously undocumented information being critical for conjugating the verb. 3) Each verb entry in the print version of the dictionary systematically gives two to three of the following verb forms, depending on the verb type: the imperfective (s/he is (verbing); s/he (verbs)); the perfective (s/he (verbed)); the repetitive imperfective (s/he (verbs) regularly); and the progressive imperfective (s/he is in the Sealaska Heritage Institute IntroductionDictionary of Tlingit process of (verbing)). The vast majority of these verb forms have never before been documented and published. 4) The dictionary gives example sentences for most of the entries, which illustrate the word in context. 5) The online and CD-ROM versions have audio recordings of elders pronouncing individual entries and their example sentences. The dictionary is organized into three sections: Tlingit-English, English-Tlingit, and Semantic Category. The second section, which is English-Tlingit contains minimal information, giving the English equivalent first in italics, followed by the Tlingit word. The third section of the dictionary is organized by SEMANTIC CATEGORY. Examples of semantic categories are “trees,” “time,” “working with wood,” and “manner of movement.” All entries are assigned to at least one semantic category. This method of organizing words is useful for locating all the words in the dictionary related to a particular topic. The first section of the dictionary (Tlingit-English) contains the most detailed information for each entry, and is the section that this introduction focuses on. If a word is accessed first via the semantic category or English-Tlingit section, it should then be located in the Tingit-English section in order to get as much information about the word as possible. The alphabetical order of the entries in the Tlingit-English section follows the English alphabetical order as closely as possible and is as follows: A/AA CH CH’ D DL DZ E/EE/EI G GW Ç ÇW H I J K KW K’ K’W Ñ ÑW Ñ’ Ñ’W L L’ N OO S S’ SH T T’ TL TL’ TS TS’ U W X XW X’ X’W Ý Ýw Ý’ Ý’W Y . All entries in the dictionary, regardless of their word class, contain some information in common. For those entries that have alternate pronunciations, whether they be regional or individual, those pronunciations are listed as VARIANTS. If a Sealaska Heritage Institute Dictionary of TlingitIntroduction variant is known to belong to a specific region, it is considered a dialectal variant, and is followed by a capital letter representing the dialect area. The four primary language consultants for this project are from Angoon, Douglas Island, and Hoonah. Of these villages, Angoon differs from the others in the pronunciation of a handful of particular words and certain verb stems. Many verbs stems containing the vowel ei for Hoonah and Douglas speakers are pronounced as ee for the Angoon speaker. Here are a few examples: yéi awsinei (Douglas, Hoonah) / yéi awsinee (Angoon) (“s/he fixed it”); uwaýéi (Douglas, Hoonah) / uwaýée (Angoon) (“s/he stayed overnight”); and áa akawdliýéitl’ (Douglas, Hoonah) / áa akawdliýéetl’ (Angoon) (“s/he is afraid of it”). When a pronunciation particular to Angoon has been discovered, the variant is followed by (An) in the dictionary. Any dialectal information in this dictionary pertaining to the Interior comes directly from the Interior Tlingit Noun Dictionary compiled by Jeff Leer, Doug Hitch, and John Ritter (Yukon Native Language Center, 2001). Entries for which Interior dialect information is known are indicated as follows: (At) = Atlin, (C) = Carcross, (T) = Teslin Some common variations in pronunciation pertaining to vowel tone and/or length may or may not be regional and deserve attention. Two examples are aadéi (“toward there”) and wéi (“the”) which have the alternate short-vowel pronunciations aadé and wé. At this point, it is not clear whether these are regional, individual, or contextual variations. While most speakers tend to consistently use one or the other pronunciation, a few speakers alternate between the two. More research is needed to determine the exact nature of this variation. The same goes for the tone on words such as kei and yei which occur before verbs, as in áa kei uwawát (“s/he grew up there”). For some speakers, the tone on kei is low and for others it is high, as in áa kéi uwawát. For a few speakers, the tone varies depending on the sentence. This phenomenon also requires further research. As for learners of the language, either pronunciation of these pairs is acceptable and correct: kei/kéi, aadéi/aadé, wéi/wé. Throughout the dictionary, there is variation as to how these are written. For the most part, vowel length has been standardized to short (aadé, wé), but this is not always the case in the example sentences, where Sealaska Heritage Institute IntroductionDictionary of Tlingit you may find some written long.