Native to United States Native speakers 15 (2007) | Ethnicity 400 Tanana (2007) | |
Writing system Latin (Northern Athabaskan alphabet) | ||
Lower Tanana (also Tanana and/or Middle Tanana) is an endangered language spoken in Interior Alaska in the lower Tanana River villages of Minto and Nenana. Of about 380 Tanana people in the two villages, about 30 still speak the language. As of 2010, "Speakers who grew up with Lower Tanana as their first language can be found only in the 250-person village of Minto." It is one of the large family of Athabaskan languages, also known as Dené.
Contents
The Athabaskan (or Dené) bands who formerly occupied a territory between the Salcha and the Goodpaster rivers spoke a distinct dialect that linguists term the Middle Tanana language.
Dialects
Examples
Songs
In a 2008–2009 project, linguist Siri Tuttle of the University of Alaska's Native Language Center "worked with elders to translate and document song lyrics, some on file at the language center and some recorded during the project."
"The Minto dialect of Tanana ... allows speakers to occasionally change the number of syllables in longer words."