Native Languages of Alaska

• Main Author: Krauss, Michael E
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 2007
• Subjects: aleut; Arctic; Chukotka; eskimo*; Eskimo–Aleut; eyak; Greenland; haida; Prince of Wales Island; tlingit; Tsimshian*; Alaska
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199266623.003.0021; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52484978/isbn-9780199266623-book-part-21.pdf

Abstract Alaska is the original American homeland of two great language families, Eskimo-Aleut and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit, both of which have spread dramatically beyond Alaska. Conversely, two minor families have recently also spread into extreme south-eastern Alaska. One is Haida, one or two languages, the northern variety of which spread from the Queen Charlotte Islands to southern Prince of Wales Island during the eighteenth century, and the other is Tsimshianic, three or four languages, the Coastal variety of which spread to Annette Island in 1887. Eskimo-Aleut spread from Alaska far east over the Canadian Arctic to reach Greenland 1,000 years ago, but all the deeper diversity of the family is still in Alaska (and neighbouring Russia: Chukotka and the Commander Islands).