The Upper Kuskokwim language (also called Kolchan or Goltsan or Dinak'i) is an

Athabaskan Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...

language of the

Na-Dené Na-Dene (; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included, but is now considere ...

language family. It is spoken by the

Upper Kuskokwim people The Upper Kuskokwim people or Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskans, Upper Kuskokwim Athabascans ( own native name ), and historically Kolchan, Goltsan, Tundra Kolosh, and McGrath Ingalik are an Alaskan Athabaskan people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolin ...

in the Upper

Kuskokwim River The Kuskokwim River or Kusko River (Yup'ik: ''Kusquqvak''; Deg Xinag: ''Digenegh''; Upper Kuskokwim: ''Dichinanek' ''; russian: Кускоквим (''Kuskokvim'')) is a river, long, in Southwest Alaska in the United States. It is the ninth la ...

villages of Nikolai, Telida, and

McGrath McGrath or MacGrath derives from the Irish surname Mac Craith and is occasionally noted with a space: e.g. Izzy Mc Grath. In Ireland, it is pronounced "Ma Grah". In Australia and New Zealand it is pronounced ''MuhGrah''. Notable people with the su ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

. About 40 of a total of 160 Upper Kuskokwim people (Dichinanek’ Hwt’ana) still speak the language. A practical

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

of the language was established by Raymond Collins, who in 1964 began linguistic work at Nikolai. Since 1990s, the language has also been documented by a Russian linguist

Andrej Kibrik Andrej Kibrik (russian: Андре́й Алекса́ндрович Ки́брик; born June 18, 1963) is a Russian linguist, the director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 2017), and professor at the Phil ...

Bibliography

Alaska Native Language Center
Retrieved on 2007-03-14. * Collins, Raymond and Sally Jo Collins. 2004. Dichinanek' Hwt'ana: A History of the people of the Upper Kuskokwim who live in Nikolai and Telida, Alaska. (Online: Alaska Native Language Archive ite
UK964C2004

References

Links

Upper Kuskokwim Language and Culture Preservation
(website in development)
Dinak'i , Upper Kuskokwim Dictionary
iOS app Northern Athabaskan languages Indigenous languages of Alaska Indigenous languages of the North American Subarctic Endangered Athabaskan languages {{Alaska-stub