Northern Athabaskan language spoken in Alaska and Canada
This article is about the Athabaskan language. For the Han language, see
Chinese language
.
The
Han
language (alternatively spelled as
Haen
) (also known as Dawson, Han-Kutchin, Moosehide) is a
Northern Athabaskan
language spoken by the
Han Hwech'in
(translated to
people who live along the river
, sometimes anglicized as
Hankutchin
). Athabascan refers to the interrelated complexity of languages spoken in Canada and Alaska each with its own dialect: the village of
Eagle, Alaska
in the United States and the town of
Dawson City, Yukon Territory
in Canada, though there are also Han speakers in the nearby city of
Fairbanks, Alaska
.
[4]
[5]
Furthermore, there was a decline in speakers in Dawson City as a result of the influx of gold miners in the mid-19th century.
[5]
Han is in the Northern Athabaskan subgrouping of the
Na-Dene
language family. It is most closely related to
Gwich'in
and
Upper Tanana
.
[5]
Phonology
[
edit
]
Consonants
[
edit
]
The consonants of Han are listed below with IPA notation on the left, the standard orthography in
⟨brackets⟩
:
[5]
Vowels
[
edit
]
Revitalization
[
edit
]
There are about a dozen people, all elderly, who speak Han as their native language,
[6]
though there is a growing second-language speaker community.
The
Tr'ondek Hwech'in
(formerly known as the Dawson First Nation) in the Yukon Territory support the revitalization of Han, and there are current efforts to revive the language locally. There is an effort to promote traditional skills and finding a balance between the way of the newcomer's which further promotes the development and revitalization of the language.
[4]
As of April 2024, the last fluent speaker of Han in Yukon, a 96 year old elder, passed away.
[7]
Since 1991, the
Robert Service School
in
Dawson City
has hosted the Han Language program, and the Tr'ondek Hwech'in supports adult language classes and bi-annual cultural gatherings.
[5]
There are many other resources used to learn Han, particularly online ones such as, FirstVoices and Yukon Native Learning Centre. These online learning language tools teach the tradition, culture, history, and the language of Han.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Manker, Jonathan, and Tsuu T’ina Nation (2013).
The Syntax of Sluicing in Han
. Dene Languages Conference, Calgary, Alberta.
- Manker, Jonathan (2014).
Tone Specification and the Tone-Bearing Unit (TBU) in Han Athabascan
. WSLCA 19 St. John's, Newfoundland.
- O’Leary, M. (2017)
The Interaction of Wh-movement and Topicalization in Han
.
2016 Dene Language Conference Proceedings,
81?88.
- Lehman, S. B. & O’Leary, M. (2019).
Unexpected Athabaskan Pronouns
. In Margit Bowler, Philip T. Duncan, Travis Major, Harold Torrence (eds.),
UCLA Working Papers: Schuhschrift: Papers in Honor of Russell Schuh
, 122?137.
Notes
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
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Northern
| Southern Alaskan
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Central Alaska?Yukon
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Northwestern Canada
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Central British Columbia
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Other North Athabaskan
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Pacific Coast
| California Athabaskan
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Oregon Athabaskan
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Southern
| Western Apachean
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Eastern Apachean
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Plains Apachean
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Proto-language
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Official languages
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Indigenous languages
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Pidgins, creoles and mixed
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Minority languages
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Sign languages
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