Eyak language

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Eyak is a Na-Dené language that was historically spoken in southcentral Alaska, near the mouth of the Copper River.

Today, the language has only one surviving elderly speaker, Marie Smith of Cordova, now resident in Anchorage. Because of the dying off of its native speakers, Eyak has become a poster child for the fight against language extinction.

It should be noted that the spread of English and suppression of aboriginal languages by American authorities are not the only reason for the decline of the Eyak language. The northward migration of the Tlingit people around Yakutat in precontact times encouraged the use of Tlingit rather than Eyak along much of the Gulf Coast of Alaska. Eyak was also under pressure from its neighbors to the west, the Alutiiq eskimos of Prince William Sound, as well as some pressure from the Ahtna people of the Copper River valley. Eyak and Tlingit culture began to merge along the Gulf Coast, and a number of Eyak speaking groups were absorbed by the Gulf Coast Tlingit populations. This resulted in the replacement of Eyak by Tlingit among most of the mixed groups after a few generations, as reported in Tlingit oral histories of the area. This process was however entirely voluntary, in stark contrast to the coercive efforts of the American government during the Territorial period of Alaska.

The closest relatives of Eyak are the Athabaskan languages. The Eyak-Athabaskan cluster, together with Tlingit, forms a basic division of the Na-Dené language phylum.

Numerous Tlingit place names along the Gulf Coast are derived from names in Eyak; they have obscure or even nonsensical meanings in Tlingit, but oral tradition has maintained many Eyak etymologies. The existence of Eyak-derived Tlingit names along most of the coast towards southeast Alaska is strong evidence that the prehistoric range of Eyak was once far greater than it was at the time of European contact. This confirms both Tlingit and Eyak oral histories of migration throughout the region.

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