Haida language

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Haida
X̲aat Kíl
Spoken in	Canada (Haida Gwaii / Queen Charlotte Islands), Alaska (Prince of Wales Island)
Total speakers	First language: 45 Second language: 275
Ranking	Endangered
Language family	language isolate Haida
Writing system	Latin alphabet
Official status
Official language in	Council of the Haida Nation
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	none
ISO 639-2	hai
ISO 639-3	hai
Pre-European distribution of Haida
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Haida language (X̲aat Kíl, X̲aadas Kíl, X̲aayda Kil) is the language of the Haida people. It contains eight vowels and well over 30 consonants. Linguist Edward Sapir classified Haida as one of the Na-Dené languages in 1915, a position later supported by others, notably Pinnow, Greenberg, Enrico, Ruhlen, Manaster Ramer, and Bengtson (cf. list of publications below). Many linguists today continue to regard Haida as a language isolate^[1]. A recent proposal linking Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit to the Yeniseian family of central Siberia^[2] did not find evidence for including Haida in this grouping. Whether one regards Haida's genetic affiliation as an open question or follows Sapir in classifying it as Na-Dene, Haida is doubtless one of the more intriguing languages of the Americas from a historical perspective.

While approximately one hundred years ago the entire Haida population was fluent^[3], today the Haida language is extremely endangered, with only about 45 native speakers,^[4] nearly all of whom are older adults.^[5][6] Although the number of native speakers has diminished along the years, according to a 2001 Canadian Census there are now about 275 speakers in British Columbia alone,^[3] and with revived interest in the language, this figure is expected to grow.

Currently Haida citizens and friends in all three dialect communities are working to revitalizing the language. In Skidegate, fluent speakers gather on a daily basis to work on the southern or Skidegate dialect and have produced a large series of recordings. In Masset, a group of younger learners is working with their fluent elders to reintegrate the northern or Masset dialect into their daily lives. In Alaska, the community conducts regular language classes for teens and adults, and has built a website complete with on-line recordings of the Kaigani dialect.

Sounds

Consonants

• ^1  Inside words, the plain stops can be voiced.
• ^2  For some speakers, [t͡ʃ] occurs only at the beginning of syllables, while [t͡s] does not occur there. They are the same phoneme. A similar situation applies with [t͡sʼ] and [t͡ʃʼ].^{[citation needed]}
• ^3  Instead of an epiglottal fricative, the Masset dialect uses an epiglottal trill.

Tone

Haida features phonemic tone, the nature of which differs by dialect. In Kaigani the system is one of pitch accent, with at most one syllable per word featuring high tone; in Masset and Skidegate tone is contrastive in heavy syllables. All the above systems feature two tones: high and low.

References

1. ^ Schoonmaker, Peter K.; Bettina Von Hagen, Edward C. Wolf (1997). The Rain Forests of Home: Profile Of A North American Bioregion. Island Press. p. 257. ISBN 1559634804. 
2. ^ Dene-Yeniseic Symposium
3. ^ ^{a b} "UBC World Language Fair’s HAIDA webpage". http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/LERC/courses/489/worldlang/haida/Distribution%20Page.htm. Retrieved 2008-05-23. 
4. ^ "Alaska Native Language Population and Speaker Statistics". 1 January 1999. http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/stats.html. Retrieved 2008-03-17. 
5. ^ "Ethnologue report for language code:hdn". http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=hdn. Retrieved 2008-03-17. 
6. ^ "Haida Language Mainpage". http://haidalanguage.org/. Retrieved 2008-05-23. 

Publications describing Haida language structure or classification

1. Bengtson, John D. (2008), “Materials for a Comparative Grammar of the Dene-Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) Languages.” Aspects of Comparative Linguistics, vol. 3, Moscow: RSUH Publishers, pp. 45–118
2. Dürr, Michael & Egon Renner. 1995. The history of the Na-Dene controversy: A sketch. Language and Culture in North America: Studies in Honor of Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow, ed. by Egon Renner & Michael Dürr, 3-18. (Lincom Studies in Native American Linguistics 2). Munich: Lincom Europa.
3. Enrico, John. 1983a. "The Haida language." The outer shores, edited by G. E. Scudder and Nicholas Gessler. Queen Charlotte City, B.C.: Queen Charlotte Islands Museum Press. Pp. 223-248.
4. Enrico, John. 1983b. "Tense in the Haida relative clause." International journal of American linguistics 52:91-123.
5. Enrico, John. 1986. "Word order, focus and topic in Haida." International journal of American linguistics 49:136-166.
6. Enrico, John. 1991. The lexical phonology of Masset Haida. (Alaska Native Language Center research papers, 8.) Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center.
7. Enrico, John. 1998. "Remarks on pitch in Skidegate Haida." Gengo Kenkyu 12:115-120.
8. Enrico, John. 2003. Haida syntax. (2 volumes). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
9. Enrico, John. 2004. Toward Proto – Na-Dene. Anthropological Linguistics 46(3).229 – 302.
10. Enrico, John. 2005. Haida dictionary: Skidegate, Masset, and Alaskan Dialects. (2 volumes). Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center; Juneau: Sealaska Heritage Institute.
11. Greenberg, J.H. 1987a. Language in the Americas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
12. Greenberg, J.H. 1987b. “The Na-Dene Problem.” In Greenberg (1987a), pp. 321-330.
13. Lawrence, Erma. 1977. Haida dictionary. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center.
14. Levine, Robert D. 1979. Haida and Na-Dene: A new look at the evidence. International Journal of American Linguistics 45(2).157 – 70.
15. Manaster Ramer, Alexis. 1996. "Sapir's classifications: Haida and the other Na Dene languages." Anthropological linguistics 38:179-215.
16. Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1976. Geschichte der Na-Dene-Forschung. (Indiana : Beihefte ; 5). Berlin: Mann. ISBN 3-7861-3027-2
17. Pinnow. H-J. 1985. Das Haida als Na-Dene Sprache. (Abhandlungen der völkerkundlichen Arbeitsgemeinschaft, Hefte 43-46.) Nortorf, Germany: Völkerkundliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft.
18. Pinnow. H-J. 2006a. Die Na-Dene-Sprachen im Lichte der Greenberg-Klassifikation. / The Na-Déné Languages in Light of Greenberg's Classification. Zweite erweiterte Auflage / Second revised edition. Bredstedt: Druckerei Lempfert.
19. Pinnow. H-J. 2006b. Sprachhistorische Untersuchung zur Stellung des Haida als Na-Dene-Sprache. (Unveränderte Neuausgabe aus INDIANA 10, Gedenkschrift Gerdt Kutscher. Teil 2. Berlin 1985. Mit einem Anhang = Die Na-Dene-Sprachen im Verhältnis zum Tibeto-Chinesischen.) Bredstedt: Druckerei Lempfert.
20. Ruhlen M. 1998. "The Origin of the Na-Dene". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 95, no. 23: 13994-6.
21. Sapir, Edward. 1915. The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report. American Anthropologist 17.534 – 558.
22. Swanton, John R. 1905. Haida texts and myths. Skidegate dialect. (Bureau of American Ethnology bulletin 29.) Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
23. Swanton, John R. 1908. Haida texts. Masset dialect. (Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 10, part 2.) Leiden: E. J. Brill.

External links

• Haida language
• Listen to the sounds of Haida
• Raven, a story in the Haida language
• Haida writing systems
• The Book of Common Prayer in Haida

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