Victor Golla, Ives Goddard, Lyle Campbell, Marianne Mithun and Mauricio Mixco. 2008. "North America." In Atlas of the World's Languages, edited by Chris Moseley and Ron Asher. 7-41. Routledge.
Speaker Number Trend 3
Only about half of community members speak the language. Speaker numbers are decreasing steadily, but not at an accelerated pace.
Domain Of Use 3
Used mainly in the home and/or with family, but remains the primary language of these domains for many community members.
Transmission 2
Most adults in the community are speakers, but children generally are not.
Speakers
Location and Context
Spoken in the Northwest Territories between Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake. It is the first language of 2,470 people (of whom about 1,350 regularly use it in the home), primarily in five small communities: Detah (105 speakers out of a total population of 190), Rae Lakes (210 out of 260), Rae-Edzo (1,010 out of 1,655), Snare
Lake (100 out of 135), and Wha Ti (325 out of 415). There are also about 220 speakers in the city of Yellowknife, as well as an unknown number of speakers in the dialectally mixed community of Déline (Fort Franklin).