[NB: Enable captions for this video to get a transcription of the Tlingit being spoken along with an English translation.]Tlingit is an endangered language spoken in Southeast Alaska and the neighboring parts of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. Tlingit makes up one branch of the Na-Dene language family, Athabascan and Eyak (now extinct) comprising the other two. A current list of speakers in both the US and Canada, naming individuals, totals 114. Nearly all of these birth speakers are over 80; the few younger exceptions are those who were raised by their grandparents. Among the birth speakers, the eldest generation has the fullest range of fluency and is capable of providing consultation to the research proposed here. However, many of the most fluent are quickly becoming too debilitated to collaborate in this research. Since one project documenting Tlingit verb forms began in 2005, four of the nine primary language consultants to the project have passed away.Cast: TheLanguageDocumentationCrowdTags: tlingit language, language endangerment, language documentation, native american languages and crowdfunding
