Tsuutüina, () formerly known as Sarcee or Sarsi, is an Athabaskan language spoken by the people of the Tsuutüina Nation, whose reserve and community is near Calgary, Alberta. It is related to other Athabaskan languages, such as Navajo and Chiricahua to the south, and Dene Suline and Tà Âñèchë to the north.
The name Tsuutüina comes from the Tsuutüina self designation , meaning "many people", "nation tribe", or "people among the beavers". Sarcee is a deprecated exonym from Siksiká.
Tsuutüina is a critically endangered language, with only 150 speakers, 80 of whom speak it as their mother tongue, according to the 2016 Canadian census. The Tsuutüina Nation has created the Tsuutüina Gunaha Institute with the intention of creating new fluent speakers. This includes full KâÂÂ4 immersion education at schools on the Nation and placing stop signs in the Tsuutüina language at intersections in the Tsuutüina Nation.
The consonants of Tsuutüina are listed below, with symbols from the standard orthography in brackets:
There are four phonemically distinct vowel qualities in Tsuutüina: , represented as . While and are fairly constant, can vary considerably.
Vowels are also distinguished by length and tone, similar to other Athabaskan languages, so that Tsuutüina, taking the total number of vowel phonemes to 24 (i.e. ).
Nouns in Tsuutüina are not declined, and most plural nouns are not distinguished from singular nouns. However, kinship terms are distinguished between singular and plural form by adding the suffix (or ) to the end of the noun or by using the word .
Nouns can exist in free form or possessed form. When in possessed form, the prefixes listed below can be attached to nouns to show possession. For example, , "knife", can be affixed with the 1st person prefix to become or "my knife". Note that is the possessed form of the noun.
Some nouns, like , as shown above, can alternate between free form and possessed form. A few nouns, like , "snow", are never possessed and exist only in free form. Other nouns, such as , "head", have no free form and must always be possessed.