Crippen, JamesDzéiwsh Kakák’w Hít, Deisheetaan, Shtax’héen Kwáan Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Haa yóo x’atángi áyá tusineixát – We are Saving our Language The Tlingit language is one of the most important aspects of our culture, one which is being rapidly lost as our elders pass away. Language revitalization, the effort to reverse language loss (Tsunoda 2005, 168ff.), has been underway since the 1980s, but has been largely unsuccessful for a wide variety of social reasons which have been considered by Dauenhauer & Dauenhauer (1998). One relatively undiscussed issue is more linguistic than social, that learning Tlingit as a second language is very difficult for English speakers. Tlingit and English are typologically very different, so learners have little scaffolding on which to build competence. Furthermore, there is extremely little documentation on Tlingit outside of arcane and archaic linguistic analyses which are inaccessible to nonspecialist learners. In an attempt to rectify this situation, I have personally begun studying Tlingit with the hope of making linguistic knowledge more accessible to learners. I will discuss what is known about Tlingit today, and will talk about how linguistic knowledge can help inform further teaching and revitalization. Finally, I will outline aspects of language revitalization and show pathways for enlivening our linguistic heritage.
