Ahtna or Ahtena (, from 'Copper River') is the Na-Dené language of the Ahtna ethnic group of the Copper River area of Alaska. The language is also known as Copper River or Mednovskiy.

The Ahtna language consists of four different dialects: Upper, Central, Lower, and Western. Three of the four are still spoken today. Ahtna is closely related to Dena'ina.

The similar name Atnah occurs in the journals of Simon Fraser and other early European diarists in what is now British Columbia as a reference to the Tsilhqot'in people, another Northern Athapaskan group.

Classification

Ahtna is classified as belonging to the Northern Athabaskan languages, a subgrouping of the Athabaskan languages.

History

Ahtna is one of the eleven Athabaskan languages native to Alaska. The Ahtna language comes from the proto-Athabaskan language, believed to have evolved 5,000 to 10,000 years ago when humans migrated from Eurasia to North America over the Bering land bridge (Beringia), when it was dried up and exposed creating a natural land bridge. Many indigenous Native American languages are thought to have derived from this proto-Athabaskan language. Ahtna and other Athabaskan languages, like Navajo, have many similarities, due to their common ancestry. The Ahtna language has changed very much and very often, and it is still changing today. Within the past century more than one hundred words have made their way into the Ahtna vocabulary mostly due to influence from English. Contact with Russians influenced the Ahtna language with many Russian loanwords being introduced. With contact from English speakers, especially recently, English words have also been introduced. Some words are also borrowed from the Alaskan Tlingit and Alutiiq native languages. The Upper Ahtna live on the upper portion of the Copper River, The Middle or Central Ahtna live slightly down river from there, The Lower Ahtna live near the mouth of the Copper River, which opens into the Gulf of Alaska, and the Western Ahtna live to the West of the River.

The Ahtna people live on and near traditional villages. There are eight villages within the Ahtna Region: Cantwell, Chistochina, Chitina, Copper Center, Gakona, Gulkana, Mentasta and Tazlina. They are all recognized federally.

Revitalization

There are 15 elderly speakers out of a population of 500, and the language is facing extinction.

The subsistence and fishing-rights activist Katie John (1915–2013) of Mentasta helped develop an Ahtna alphabet in the 1970s and recorded a pronunciation guide of the Mentasta dialect.

In 2012 a facing-bilingual collection of poetry in Ahtna and English, The Indian Prophet, was published by poet John Smelcer.

In a revitalization program, the Ya Ne Dah Ah School in Sutton, Alaska teaches the Ahtna language as a part of its curriculum.

As of 2010, a digital archiving project of Ahtna was underway.

Dialects and bands

There are four main dialect divisions and eight bands (tribal unions):

  • Lower Ahtna (endonym ')
  • Chitina/Taral Band
  • Tonsina/Klutina Band
  • Central Ahtna or Middle Ahtna (endonym ')
  • Gulkona/Gakona Band
  • Western Ahtna (own name Tsaay Hwt'aene)
  • Tyone/Mendeltna Band
  • Cantwell/Denali Band
  • Upper Ahtna (endonym ')
  • Sanford River/Chistochina Band
  • Slana/Batzulnetas Band
  • Mentasta Band

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" |

! rowspan="2" |Labial

! colspan="3" |Alveolar

! rowspan="2" |Velar

! rowspan="2" |Uvular

! rowspan="2" |Glottal

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!<small>plain</small>

!<small>sibilant</small>

!<small>lateral</small>

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! colspan="2" |Nasals

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! rowspan="3" |Plosive/<br>affricate

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! rowspan="2" |Fricatives

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Vowels

The vowels in Kari's practical orthography and phonology are as follows.

Possessives

Possession is indicated by prefixes such as ' "my", ' or ' "his/her", ' "our"; as in ' "my mother", ' (or ') "his/her mother", ' "our mother".

{| class="wikitable"

!Ahtna

!Tanacross

!Lower Tanana

!meaning

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|caribou

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|rabbit

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|beaver

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|muskrat

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|lynx

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|Dall sheep

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|bear

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|squirrel

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|salmon

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References

  • Ahtna basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
  • Ahtna Language, Mentasta Dialect
  • Ahtna language, Chistochina Dialect
  • An Ahtna language story
  • Endangered Language Project: Ahtna
  • Ahtna Noun Dictionary and Pronunciation Guide (2nd Edition)