Medny Aleut language

Mednyj Aleut
Native to Russia
Region Commander Islands
Native speakers
 5 (2004)
10–12 (1996)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 mud
Glottolog medn1235[2]

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. There are only five native speakers left.

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 in Copper Island, from where it takes its name, but all the population of that island was moved to Bering island in 1970.

See also

Citations

  1. ↑ Ernst Håkon Jahr & Ingvild Broch (1996) Language Contact in the Arctic: Northern Pidgins and Contact Languages, Walter de Gruyter
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Mednyj Aleut". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ Donald Winford. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing.

Sources


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