Haida Language - Dialects

Dialects

Haida has a major dialectal division between Northern and Southern dialects. Northern Haida is split into Alaskan (or Kaigani) Haida and Masset (or North Graham Island) Haida. Southern Haida was originally split into Skidegate Haida and Ninstints Haida, but Ninstints Haida is now extinct and is poorly documented. The dialects differ in phonology and to some extent vocabulary; however, they are grammatically mostly identical.

Northern Haida is notable for containing radical consonants These consonants are generally rare in the world's languages, including in North American languages. They are an areal feature of some languages in a small portion of Northwest America, in the Salishan and Wakashan languages as well as Haida. Those radical consonants of Wakashan and Northern Haida are known to have developed recently.