Talk:Hän language

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View comments (edit) basic linguistics stub; needs expansion; see other language comments re lay content. Needs separate people article as Hän Hwëch'in, or to existing government article, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation --Skookum1 (unknown date) Still the case, concerning linguistics. There's only a phoneme list, basically, right now, and one paragraph of description of the language. --Miskwito 02:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

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Ethnologue says 7 or 8 speakers, and if they are all elderly I'd expect the number to decline with time, not rise. But it was changed to 15...so is there a cite for that? Everyking 11:04, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry for not citing my sources.

Numbers of native speakers can rise as more information about native speakers is obtained. One big Athabaskan example is Eyak: it was thought to be extinct until it was "rediscovered" this century. Linguists get these number by simply asking people in the language community and other linguists. It is possible that the linguists have not asked the right people.

(1) Mithun (1999: 349). "Han is spoken on the Yukon River by perhaps 7 in Eagle, Alaska and 8 in adjacent Dawson in Canada." (Mithun does not give her source. I wish she did.)

(2) Yukon Native Language Center website. (1998-2001). http://www.yukoncollege.yk.ca/ynlc/YNLCinfo/Han.html. "In Dawson City there is only a handful of fluent speakers remaining. The rapid decline of the language in this region is due in large part to the dramatic changes brought by the flood of outsiders with the Gold Rush of 1898. There are more speakers in Eagle and Fairbanks, Alaska, but probably fewer than fifteen.

(3) Alaska Native Language Center website. (1999-2001). http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/langs/ha.html. "Hän is the Athabascan language spoken in Alaska at the village of Eagle and in the Yukon Territory at Dawson. Of the total Alaskan Hän population of about 50 people, perhaps 12 speak the language."

The above sources are all more recent than Michael Krauss (1995).

Thanks for being so attentive to accuracy. Peace. - Ish ishwar 06:20, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

Thanks for such a thorough response; that's good enough for me. Everyking 08:55, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Found a little bit of interesting info which I'm tempted to add to the article, but the source isn't all that great (travel guide). It mentions a "successful effort to preserve the Han language, which at one point rested on only five Native speakers." It also mentions a little about children being taught the language. [1] Everyking 07:36, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The ä vowel

The ä vowel is for sure [ɑ] and not [ɛ]. I can see why the spelling convention would seem to point to that vowel. I have listened to the online audio clips and looked at their table, and the vowel is for sure not [ɛ]. Good stuff I must say. Azalea_pomp

You seem to be correct, judging by the alphabet table PFD available at the Yukon Native Language Center --Miskwito 18:55, 12 March 2007 (UTC)