Athabaskan language family
| Athabaskan | |
|---|---|
| Athabascan, Athapascan, Athapaskan Dene |
|
| Geographic distribution |
Western North America |
| Linguistic classification |
Na-Dené
|
| Subdivisions | |
| ISO 639-2 / 5 | |
| Glottolog | atha1247 |
Pre-contact distribution of Na-Dené languages (Athabaskan + Eyak + Tlingit)
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Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Dene, Athapascan, Athapaskan) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three groups of contiguous languages: Northern, Pacific Coast and Southern (or Apachean). Kari and Potter 2010:10 place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at 1,563,000 mi2 or 4,022,000 km2. Chipewyan is spoken over the largest area of any North American native language.
Although the term Athabascan is prevalent in linguistics and anthropology, there is an increasing trend among scholars to use the terms Dené and Dené languages, which is how its native speakers identify it. They are applying these terms to the entire language family. For example, following a motion by attendees in 2012, the annual Athabaskan Languages Conference changed its name to the Dené Languages Conference.
The word Athabaskan is an anglicized version of a Cree language name for Lake Athabasca (Cree: Aδapaska˙w “[where] there are reeds one after another”) in Canada. Cree is one of the Algonquian languages. The name was assigned by Albert Gallatin in his 1836 (written 1826) classification of the languages of North America. He acknowledged that it was his choice to use this name for the language family and associated peoples, writing:
I have designated them by the arbitrary denomination of Athabascas, which derived from the original name of the lake.
The four spellings—“Athabaskan”, “Athabascan”, “Athapaskan”, and “Athapascan”—are in approximately equal use. Particular communities may prefer one spelling over another (Krauss 1987). For example, the Tanana Chiefs Conference and Alaska Native Language Center prefer the spelling “Athabascan”.Ethnologue uses “Athapaskan” in naming the language family and individual languages.
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