Dena'ina Language
Dena’ina /dɨˈnaɪnə/, also Tanaina, is the Athabaskan language of the region surrounding Cook Inlet. It is geographically unique in Alaska as the only Alaska Athabaskan language to include territory which borders salt water. Four dialects are usually distinguished:
- Upper Inlet, spoken in Eklutna, Knik, Susitna, Tyonek
- Outer Inlet, spoken in Kenai, Kustatan, Seldovia
- Iliamna, spoken in Pedro Bay, Old Iliamna, Lake Iliamna area
- Inland, spoken in Nondalton, Lime Village
Of the total Dena'ina population of about 900 people, only 75-95 members still speak Dena’ina. James Kari has done extensive work on the language since 1972, including his edition with Alan Boraas of the collected writings of Peter Kalifornsky in 1991. Joan Tenenbaum also conducted extensive field research on the language in the 1970s.
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)