Ahtna or Ahtena ( / ˈ ɑː t n ə / , from At Na " Copper River ") is the Na-Dené language of the Ahtna ethnic group of the Copper River area of Alaska . The language is also known as Copper River or Mednovskiy .
21-704: Mount Blackburn ( Ahtna : K’ats’i Tl’aadi ) is the highest peak in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska in the United States . It is the fifth-highest peak in the United States and the twelfth-highest peak in North America . The mountain is an old, eroded shield volcano , the second-highest volcano in the U.S. behind Mount Bona and the fifth-highest in North America. It was named in 1885 by Lt. Henry T. Allen of
42-462: A disjunct boundary. '+' indicates a morpheme boundary. ta into water # # d QUAL + + l CL + + dlok' laugh (lexical listing: verb theme) ta # d + l + dlok' {into water} # QUAL + CL + laugh "Water is gurgling." (surface form) In the Ahtna language the verb typically goes after the noun. In the Ahtna language, modifiers usually go after
63-512: A fact that was not understood until the 1960s when new USGS maps were published. The first ascent of the west peak, and hence Mount Blackburn, was done on May 30, 1958, by Bruce Gilbert , Dick Wahlstrom , Hans Gmoser , Adolf Bitterlich , and Leon Blumer via the North (also called the Northwest) Ridge. This team made the first ascent of Blackburn but did not even know it at the time due to
84-614: A word. The consonants in Kari's IPA phonology and practical orthography are shown in the following table . The vowels in Kari's practical orthography and phonology are as follows. There is some variation in pronunciation of words according to dialect. Possession is indicated by prefixes such as s- "my", u- or yu'- "his/her", ne- "our"; as in snaan "my mother", unaan (or yu'naan ) "his/her mother", nenaan "our mother". Verbs are primarily prefixing. There are often six or more prefixes before
105-413: Is a moderate climb by Alaskan standards ( Alaska Grade 2). Ahtna language The Ahtna language consists of four different dialects: Upper, Central, Lower, and Western. Three of the four are still spoken today. Ahtna is closely related to Dena'ina . The similar name Atnah occurs in the journals of Simon Fraser and other early European diarists in what is now British Columbia as a reference to
126-484: Is inferred that a caldera collapse took place between 4.2 and 3.4 million years ago, after which activity ceased. Today's standard route on the peak is the 1958 ascent route, the North (or Northwest) Ridge, which is approached from the Nabesna Glacier , on the north side of the mountain, opposite from Keen and Hardy's route. The route starts from an airstrip on the glacier at an altitude of 7,200 feet (2,200 m). It
147-463: The Kuskulana Glacier , less than 12 miles (19 km) from the summit, lies at an elevation of 2,400 ft (730 m), giving a rise of 14,000 ft (4,270 m). While these figures speak to the peak's relief, one measure of its independence is that it is the 50th-most topographically prominent peak in the world. The western of Blackburn's two summits is the mountain's highest point,
168-583: The Tsilhqot'in people, another Northern Athapaskan group. Ahtna is classified as belonging to the Northern Athabaskan languages , a subgrouping of the Athabaskan languages . Ahtna is one of the eleven Athabaskan languages native to Alaska. The Ahtna language comes from the proto-Athabaskan language , believed to have evolved 5,000 to 10,000 years ago when humans migrated from Eurasia to North America over
189-464: The U.S. Army after Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn , a U.S. senator from Kentucky . It is located in the heart of Wrangell – St. Elias National Park , the largest national park in the country. The mountain's massif is covered almost entirely by icefields and glaciers and is the principal source of ice for the Kennicott Glacier , which flows southeast over 20 miles (32 km) to just above
210-680: The 1970s and recorded a pronunciation guide of the Mentasta dialect. In 2012 a facing-bilingual collection of poetry in Ahtna and English, The Indian Prophet , was published by poet John Smelcer . In a revitalization program, the Ya Ne Dah Ah School in Sutton, Alaska teaches the Ahtna language as a part of its curriculum. As of 2010, a digital archiving project of Ahtna was underway. There are four main dialect divisions and eight bands (tribal unions): The comparison of some animal names in
231-450: The Bering land bridge ( Beringia ), when it was dried up and exposed creating a natural land bridge. Many indigenous Native American languages are to have derived from this proto-Athabaskan language. Ahtna and other Athabaskan languages, like Navajo, have many similarities, due to their common ancestry. The Ahtna language has changed very much and very often, and it is still changing today. Within
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#1732870109596252-870: The Copper River Basin and the Wrangell Mountains. The Ahtna Region is bordered by the Nutzotin river in the Northeast and the Alaska Range in the North. The Talkeetna Mountains are to the Chugach Mountains are to the South. The Upper Ahtna live on the upper portion of the Copper River, The Middle or Central Ahtna live slightly down river from there, The Lower Ahtna live near the mouth of the Copper River, which opens into
273-785: The Gulf of Alaska, and the Western Ahtna live to the West of the River. The Ahtna people live on and near traditional villages. There are eight villages within the Ahtna Region: Cantwell, Chistochina, Chitina, Copper Center, Gakona, Gulkana, Mentasta and Tazlina. They are all recognized federally. There are 15 elderly speakers out of a population of 500, and the language is facing extinction. The subsistence and fishing-rights activist Katie John (1915–2013) of Mentasta helped develop an Ahtna alphabet in
294-418: The heavily eroded core of a shield volcano. Because it is shrouded in permanent ice, its internal structure cannot be determined. It is believed to have a summit caldera, greatly modified by glaciation. The oldest rocks in the area are granites, about 4.2 million years old, representing an intrusive mass. The majority of the mountain is 3.4 million year old granite, intruding between andesite flows. From this it
315-467: The incorrect identification of the highest point. Blumer's article in the 1959 American Alpine Journal is titled "Mount Blackburn – Second Ascent." Kennedy Peak , or East Blackburn , 16,286 ft (4,964 m), is the eastern summit and was originally thought to be the highest point. The first ascent of this summit was made in 1912 by Dora Keen and George Handy via the Kennicott Glacier (on
336-576: The noun they modify. Examples of this include the name of the deity or trickster figure Saghani Ggaay , where saghani is the noun " raven " and ggaay the adjective "little, small" or in the term nen ten "permafrost", a combination of nen "land, ground" and ten "frozen". This word order is also seen in place names such as Dghelaay Ce'e " Denali /Mount McKinley", literally "Biggest Mountain", and Ben Ce'e "Lake Susitna", literally "Big Lake". Nabesna Glacier Too Many Requests If you report this error to
357-504: The past century more than one hundred words have made their way into the Ahtna vocabulary mostly due to influence from English. Contact with Russians influenced the Ahtna language with many Russian loanwords being introduced. With contact from English speakers, especially recently, English words have also been introduced. Some words are also borrowed from the Alaskan Tlingit and Alutiiq native languages. The Ahtna region consists of
378-687: The south side of the mountain) and East Face. This heady exploit was ahead of its time. Dora Keen, driven by a deep desire for the climb, solicited miners from the nearby Kennecott Copper Mines , and forged a route up the heavily crevassed East Face to the East Peak, but did not traverse over to the West Peak. Keen went on to write a famous article for the Saturday Evening Post titled, "First up Mount Blackburn." In 1912, Keen and Handy thought they were on Blackburn's highest point. Mount Blackburn represents
399-463: The stem and then one or more suffixes. (1a) displays a surface form in Ahtna spelling while (1b) is the verb theme. Three prefixes are present that have to be listed with the stem to make up the form. Anything adjacent in a verb theme can be separated by morphemes in the forms surface. Verb themes display what elements should be listed in a dictionary for a speaker to be able to reconstruct the verb. '#' displays an important word-internal boundary known as
420-429: The three Athabaskan languages: Athabaskan languages are primarily prefixing. Many prefixes are presented together. There is limited suffixation and often one word has as much meaning as an English language sentence. Verbs are very complex therefore creating many different meanings or analysis of verbs. Some verbs include syntactic principles in addition to and/or replacement of morphological principles when constructing
441-556: The town of McCarthy . The mountain also contributes a large volume of ice to the north-flowing Nabesna Glacier and the Kuskulana Glacier system. Mount Blackburn is a large, dramatic peak, with great local relief and independence from higher peaks. Its west face drops over 11,000 ft (3,350 m) to the Kuskulana Glacier in less than 4 horizontal miles (6.4 km). Its other faces drop 8,000–10,000 ft (2,440–3,050 m), all in less than 8 miles (13 km). The toe of
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