Writers Almanac January 21 ~ Marie Smith Jones, chief of Alaska’s Eyak people, died on this date in 2008. Jones was the last fluent native speaker of the Eyak tongue; it died with her and thus became the first Native Alaskan language to be declared “extinct.” Jones had devoted her life to the preservation of her language: recording it, helping to create a dictionary, and trying to formalize its grammar so it could be taught to others. Two years later, a French college student named Guillaume Leduey came forward and said that he had been teaching himself Eyak for several years, using DVDs made available by the Alaska Native Language Center. Leduey came to Alaska for the first time at the age of 21, and returned the following year to help set up Eyak language workshops in Anchorage and Cordova. He is now considered fluent, but since there are no native speakers of the language, and since no one else has achieved more than symbolic proficiency, the language is still considered “dormant.”
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 11:23:47 +0000
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