Family Division
In its non-controversial core, Na-Dene consists of two branches, Tlingit and Athabaskan–Eyak:
- Tlingit: 700 speakers (Michael Krauss, 1995)
- Athabaskan–Eyak
- Eyak: extinct in 2008
- Athabaskan
- Northern
- Pacific Coast
- Southern
For linguists who follow Edward Sapir in connecting Haida to the above languages, the Haida isolate represents an additional branch, with Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit together forming the other. Dene or Dine (the Athabaskan languages) is a widely distributed group of Native languages spoken by associated peoples in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Alaska, parts of Oregon, northern California, and the American Southwest as far as northern Mexico.
The southwestern division of Athabaskan is also called Southern Athabaskan or Apachean, and includes Navajo and all the Apache dialects. Eyak was spoken in south-central Alaska; the last speaker died in 2008. Navajo is by far the most widely spoken language of the Na-Dene family, spoken in Arizona, New Mexico, and other regions of the American Southwest.
Read more about this topic: Na-Dene Languages
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or division:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)