Eyak language

Spoken in

Na - Dene

  • Eyak

Eyak is an extinct Na - Dene language that was spoken in southern Alaska near the mouth of the Copper.

Eyak has long spoken only by one person, Marie Smith Jones ( 1918-2008 ). She was the head of the Eyak Nation and lived in Anchorage, Alaska. Eyak was the world a prime example of the struggle against the apparently inexorable disappearance of languages ​​. With Marie Smith Jones ' death, the Eyak language died. Michael Krauss, a linguist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, however, has together created over several years with Jones a dictionary and a grammar of Eyak.

The closest relatives of Eyak are the Athabaskan languages. Together with the Tlingit forms Eyak Athapaskisch the Na - Dene languages ​​:

  • Na - Dene Tlingit
  • Athapaskisch
Language family Eyak people University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks, Alaska Tlingit language
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