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Eyak, an Alaska Native language of the southern coast around Cordova, lost its last native speaker when Marie Smith Jones died in January 2008. It did not vanish without a trace: decades of work had recorded conversations and stories and produced a large dictionary, which later learners have used to revive it.

Marie Smith Jones / University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska Native Language Archive

LanguageHistory

The story behind the card

Smith Jones, born in Cordova in 1918, was an honorary chief of the Eyak people. Her nine children grew up speaking English, because of the stigma then attached to Native languages. Much of what survives comes from the linguist Michael Krauss, who began working with the last Eyak speakers in 1961 and led the Alaska Native Language Center from its founding in 1972 until 2000. In 1992 Krauss warned that up to 90 per cent of the world's languages could die out or stop being learned by children within a century, a warning that helped make endangered languages a research priority. Using Krauss's materials, a French teenager, Guillaume Leduey, taught himself Eyak; since 2011 he has taught it at workshops in Alaska and online.

Türkçe oku
Alaska'nın güney kıyısındaki yerli dillerden Eyakça, Ocak 2008'de Marie Smith Jones'un ölümüyle ana dili olarak konuşan son kişiyi de kaybetti. Yine de dil iz bırakmadan yok olmadı: Onlarca yıl süren çalışmalarla kaydedilen konuşmalar, hikâyeler ve kapsamlı bir sözlük, dili yeniden öğrenmek isteyenlere kaynak oldu.

1918'de Cordova'da doğan Smith Jones, Eyak halkının onursal şefiydi. Dokuz çocuğu, o dönemde yerli dillere yöneltilen önyargı yüzünden İngilizce konuşarak büyüdü. Eyakçadan bugüne kalanların çoğunu dilbilimci Michael Krauss'a borçluyuz: Krauss, 1961'de dilin son konuşurlarıyla çalışmaya başladı; 1972'de kurulan Alaska Yerli Dilleri Merkezi'ni 2000'e kadar yönetti. 1992'de dünyadaki dillerin yüzde 90'a varan kısmının bir yüzyıl içinde yok olabileceği ya da artık çocuklara öğretilmeyeceği uyarısında bulundu; bu uyarı, tehlikedeki dilleri araştırmaların öncelikli konuları arasına soktu. Fransız bir genç olan Guillaume Leduey, Krauss'un malzemeleriyle Eyakçayı kendi kendine öğrendi; 2011'den beri Alaska'daki atölyelerde ve internette bu dili öğretiyor.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Eyak language
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