- belongs to the Athabaskan or Dene language family
- spoken by about 10,000 people in Northern Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories) in a variety of dialects
- it is the second-largest language in the Athabaskan family after Navaho
- the fourth-largest Indigenous language in Canada, after Cree, Ojibwe, and Inuktitut
- in many comunities children are not acquiring the language, so Dene Sųłiné’s continued survival is threatened
- the name of the language is made up of the word Dene meaning ‘person’ or ‘people’ and Sųłiné meaning ‘authentic’ or ‘original’
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