Mednyj Aleut language

Mednyj Aleut (also called Copper Island Creole or Copper Island Aleut) is a nearly extinct mixed language spoken on Bering Island. It is characterized by Aleut nouns and Russian verbs, each with the full inflectional complexity of the source languages.

Mednyj Aleut
Native toRussia
RegionCommander Islands
Native speakers
350 (2010)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3mud
Glottologmedn1235
ELPCopper Island Aleut[2]

Mednyj Aleut is characterised by a blending of Russian and Aleut (primarily Attu) elements in most components of the grammar, but most profoundly in the verbal morphology. The Aleut component comprises the majority of the vocabulary, all the derivational morphology, part of the simple sentence syntax, nominal inflection and certain other grammatical means. The Russian components comprise verbal inflection, negation, infinitive forms, part of the simple sentence syntax and all of the compound sentence syntax.[3]

Originally, the language was spoken by Alaskan Creoles on Copper Island, from where it takes its name, but all the population of that island was moved to Bering Island in 1970. The Alaskan Creoles are the descendents of promyshlenniki men and Aleut and Alutiiq women, and formed a small but influential population in Russian Alaska.

See also

Citations
  1. Aleut, Mednyj at Ethnologue (20th ed., 2017)
  2. Endangered Languages Project data for Copper Island Aleut.
  3. Donald Winford (10 January 2003). An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 9780631212515.

Sources


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.