classes online. , a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
There’s a fellow that you probably know, Lyle James who speaks Lingít, X̱aat Kíl, Sm’algyax , among others. And before I started actively learning, he would greet me at the store or what have you, and in Sm’algyax , and I certainly knew what he was saying, but I could not answer him. And I was a little bit embarrassed that this Lingít man was using my language and I couldn’t converse with him.I started learning Sm’algyax because it’s the one I grew up hearing.
And they’re very different. You would think, here in Southeast Alaska, where we’re so geographically close, that our languages would be similar, but they’re really not. All three are very, very different. Sentence structure is way different. And most of the sounds are different. And then I was in a headstart classroom fixing computers one day, and they had posters on the wall of Lingít words, and one of them was a lady holding your finger up to her mouth, like saying “shhh.” And it said, “Ja!”, and I just, like cracked up because, you know, maybe Lingít speakers would see us X̱aat Kíl telling each other politely to shut up when we see each other.
So we all know that our three languages are kind of in trouble. They might be considered endangered. So we definitely need more people to not just study them, but to use them every day at home, at the grocery store or what have you.
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