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Na-Dené (also Na-Dene, Nadene) is a Native American language family which includes the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit.
Na-Dene_langs.png
Haida, with 15 fluent speakers (M. Krauss, 1995), was once considered a member of the Na-Dené family, but most linguists dispute this today.
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Family division
The Na-Dene family includes:
- Tlingit language: 700 speakers (M. Krauss, 1995)
- Athabaskan-Eyak
- Eyak language: 1 speaker, (N. Barnes, 1996)
- Athabaskan languages
- Northern Athabaskan languages
- Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages
- Southern Athabaskan languages
Navajo is the most widely spoken language of the Na-Dené family, spoken in Arizona, New Mexico, and other regions of the American Southwest. Dene or Dine is a widely distributed group of Native languages and peoples spoken in Canada, Alaska, and parts of Oregon and northern California. Eyak is spoken in the Alaskan panhandle and today there is only one speaker left.
Genetic relation proposals
According to Joseph Greenberg's highly controversial classification of the languages of Native North America, Na-Dené-Athabaskan is one of the three main groups of Native languages spoken in the Americas, and represents a distinct wave of migration from Asia to the Americas. The other two are Eskimo-Aleut, spoken in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic; and Amerind, Greenberg's most controversial classification, which includes every language native to the Americas that is not Eskimo-Aleut or Na-Dené.
According to the linguistic theory of Sergei Starostin, Na-Dene is a member of the Dene-Caucasian superfamily, along with the North Caucasian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages.
Links
See also: Athabaskan, Southern Athabaskan languages.
- Ethnologue.com: Language Family Trees - Na-Dene (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=91095)
- Alaska Native Language Center (http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/)