Deg Xinag language

Deg Xinag (Deg HitTemplate:Hamzaan) is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the Deg Hitʼan peoples of the GASH region. The GASH region consists of the villages of Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross along the lower Yukon River in Interior Alaska. The language is severely endangered; out of an ethnic population of approximately 250 people, only 2 people still speak the language.

The language was referred to as Ingalik by Osgood (1936). While this term sometimes still appears in the literature, it is today considered pejorative. The word "Ingalik" is from the Yupʼik Eskimo language: , meaning "Indian".

(Their Stories of Long Ago), a collection of traditional folk tales in Deg Xinag by the elder Belle Deacon, was published in 1987 by the Alaska Native Language Center. A literacy manual with accompanying audiotapes was published in 1993.

Dialects

There are two main dialects: Yukon and Kuskokwim. The Yukon dialect (Yukon Deg Xinag, Yukon Ingalik) is the traditional language of the villages of the Lower Yukon River (Anvik, Shageluk and Holy Cross). As of 2009, there are no longer any speakers living in Anvik and Holy Cross. The other dialect (Kuskokwim Deg Xinag, Kuskokwim Ingalik) is the traditional language of the settlements of Middle Kuskokwim.

Phonology

Consonants

Here is the list of consonant sounds in Deg Xinag, including their pronunciation in IPA and their representations in Deg Xinag orthography in brackets:

Consonants in Deg Xinag

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar			Post- alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
				plain	sibilant	lateral
Plosive/ Affricate	plain	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr
	aspirated	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr
	ejective		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr
Fricative	voiceless		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr			Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr
	voiced	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr			Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr
Sonorant	voiced	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr			Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr
	voiceless	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr						Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr
	glottalized	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr		Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr					Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr	Template:IPAlink Template:Angbr

In final position, consonant sounds are voiced as .

Vowels

Vowels in Deg Xinag are .

	Front	Central	Back
Close			Template:IPA link
Close-mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Mid		Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link

Examples

• - airplane
• - animal
• - bear (lit. 'big animal')
• - children
• - day
• - doctor, nurse
• - fish
• - dog
• - my dog
• - her dog
• - mammoth
• - doll (lit. 'little person')
• - door
• - earthquake
• - my father
• - her father
• - house
• - snow
• - iron, metal
• - mountain
• - Indian ice cream
• (in Anvik); niq'asrt'ay (in Shageluk) - fox
• - in the morning
• - Hello, how are you?
• - one
• - two
• - three
• - four
• - eleven

External links

• Alaskan Native Language Center.
• Deg Xinag - Language of the Deg Hit'an
• Deg Xinag (ANLC)
• Deg Xinag Resources at the Alaska Native Language Archive (ANLA)
• Rescuing a language: College course unites far-flung students and elders in an effort to save Deg Xinag
• Word-Lists of the Athabaskan, Yup'ik and Alutiiq Languages Template:Webarchive by Lt. Laurence Zagoskin, 1847 (containing Deg Xinag on pages 3–8)
• The Order for Morning Prayer, translated by John Wight Chapman in 1896, digitized by Richard Mammana 2010
• Degexit'an basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• Deg Xinag language, alphabet and pronunciation

Further reading

• Hargus, Sharon. (2000). The Qualifier Prefixes in Yukon Deg Xinag (Ingalik). International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp. 1–21.
• Hargus, Sharon. (2008). Deg Xinag lateral affricates: Phonetic and historical perspectives. Poster presented at annual meeting of Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Chicago.
• Kari, James. (1978). Deg Xinag (Ingalik) Noun Dictionary. Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Language Center.
• Leonard, Beth R. (2007). Deg Xinag oral traditions: Reconnecting Indigenous language and education through traditional narratives (Doctoral dissertation).
• Osgood, Cornelius. (1936). The Distribution of the Northern Athapaskan Indians. (Yale University Publications in Anthropology, no. 7). New Haven: Yale University.
• Taff, Alice. (1997). Learning ancestral languages by telephone: Creating situations for language use [∗Ingalik; Telephone Conversation]. Teaching Indigenous Languages. Fairbanks: University of Alaska. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED415063.pdf.