Language
While English and Russian are the dominant languages used by Aleuts living in the US and Russia respectively, the Aleut language is still spoken by several hundred people. It is a dying language, and it is not known by many Alaskan Natives. The language belongs to the Eskimo-Aleut language family and includes three dialect groupings: Eastern Aleut, spoken on the Eastern Aleutian, Shumagin, Fox and Pribilof islands; Atkan, spoken on Atka and Bering islands; and the now extinct Attuan dialect. The Pribilof Islands boast the highest number of active speakers of Aleutian. Most of the Native elders speak it, it is very rare for an everyday person to speak the language fluently. Only about 150 people speak Aleut.
Read more about this topic: Aleut People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Experiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artis tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.”
—Robert Menzies (1894–1978)
“...I ... believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something—a great deal—to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing; and that we can deflect words, by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)