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27-550: Tazlina / t æ z ˈ l iː n ə / ( Tezdlen Na’ in Ahtna Athabascan ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Copper River Census Area, Alaska , United States. At the 2020 census the population was 244, down from 297 in 2010 . Tazlina is located at 62°2′57″N 145°24′55″W  /  62.04917°N 145.41528°W  / 62.04917; -145.41528 (62.049082, -145.415224). According to

54-433: A Dena'ina artist, Argent Kvasnikoff, created a custom alphabet for the language. Denaʼina is a polysynthetic language where a single word can mean the entirety of an English sentence. nu- again- n- you- t- FUT - n- see- gh- FUT - sh- I- l- CL - 'ił see/ FUT nu- n- t- n- gh- sh- l- 'ił again- you- FUT- see- FUT- I- CL- see/FUT "I will see you again." Verbs are

81-451: A census-designated place (CDP). The former CDP of Copperville was consolidated into Tazlina effective as of the 2010 census. As of the census of 2000, there were 149 people, 59 households, and 37 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 22.7 inhabitants per square mile (8.8/km). There were 87 housing units at an average density of 13.2 per square mile (5.1/km). The racial makeup of

108-462: 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

135-412: A household in the CDP was $ 56,000, and the median income for a family was $ 57,917. Males had a median income of $ 42,500 versus $ 25,625 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $ 23,992. There were 7.3% of families and 8.1% of the population living below the poverty line , including 14.9% of under eighteens and none of those over 64. On August 22, 1991, 11-year-old Tazlina resident Mandy Lemaire

162-614: 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

189-627: Is now British Columbia as a reference to 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

216-488: Is the Athabaskan language of the region surrounding Cook Inlet . It is geographically unique in Alaska as the only Alaska Athabaskan language to include territory which borders salt water. Four dialects are usually distinguished: Of the total Denaʼina population of about 900 people, only 75–95 members still speak Denaʼina. James Kari has done extensive work on the language since 1972, including his edition with Alan Boraas of

243-527: The United States Census Bureau , the CDP has a total area of 9.07 square miles (23.5 km), of which, 8.22 square miles (21.3 km) of it is land and 0.85 square miles (2.2 km) of it (9.37%) is water. Tazlina first appeared on the 1980 U.S. Census as a census-designated place (CDP). In 1990, it lost that designation and was reclassified as an unincorporated Alaskan Native Village Statistical Area (ANVSA). In 2000, it regained its status as

270-680: 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

297-450: 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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324-469: The CDP was 69.13% White , 24.83% Native American , and 6.04% from two or more races. 2.68% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 59 households, out of which 32.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.5% were married couples living together, 8.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.6% were non-families. 28.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 3.4% had someone living alone who

351-918: 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

378-785: 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

405-406: The collected writings of Peter Kalifornsky in 1991. Joan M. Tenenbaum also conducted extensive field research on the language in the 1970s. The word Denaʼina is composed of the dena , meaning 'person' and the human plural suffix ina . While the apostrophe which joins the two parts of this word ordinarily indicates a glottal stop, most speakers pronounce this with a diphthong, so that

432-555: The e is considered a reduced vowel similar to the English schwa . In the Inland dialect, syllables at the end of a semantic unit are often longer, lower in pitch, and have longer rhymes. The onset of a syllable has consonant clusters of up to three, such as CCCVC, though these are rare and more commonly, a syllable onset is one or two consonants. Dena'ina uses a variant of the Latin alphabet, though

459-517: The most elaborate part of speech in the Denaʼina language, which vary in verb paradigms which vary by subject, object, or aspect. The following example is of -lan the verb "to be" in the imperfective aspect and in the Nondalton dialect. esh lan esh lan I am ch'i lan ch'i lan we are in lan in lan you are eh lan eh lan you all are n lan n lan he/she/it

486-447: The murder; the series Ice Cold Killers , episode titled "Fear Thy Neighbor" aired in 2014; and the special "Vanished in Alaska" in 2018. 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

513-595: 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". Dena%27ina language Denaʼina / d ɪ ˈ n aɪ n ə / , also Tanaina ,

540-504: 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

567-478: The right to assert that prosecution witness Dave DeForest had committed the crime. All charges were automatically dismissed in 2000, after Smithart died of lung cancer in prison, awaiting a retrial . Tazlina and the Lemaire murder were featured on the true-crime television series Forensic Files , in the season 8 episode "Sphere of Influence". The television network Investigation Discovery aired two shows about

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594-477: The second syllable of the word rhymes with English 'nine' (as in the older spelling Tanaina ). Denaʼina is one of seven Alaska Athabaskan languages which does not distinguish phonemic tone. The consonants of Denaʼina in practical orthography, with IPA equivalents. The 4 vowels of Denaʼina. Close vowels are more open in the environment of a uvular consonant. Generally, the vowels i, a, and u are considered 'long' vowels and are fully pronounced in words, however

621-463: 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

648-429: 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

675-510: The vehicle, and learned from Smithart's eldest daughter that he had raped her and her sisters when they were Lemaire's age. In 1993, Smithart was tried for and convicted of first-degree kidnapping, first-degree sexual battery on a minor, and first-degree murder. He was sentenced to serve 114 years in prison. In 1999, the Alaska Supreme Court overturned Smithart's conviction, ruling that the lower court improperly denied his defense counsel

702-458: Was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 3.18. In the CDP, the age distribution of the population shows 30.2% under the age of 18, 5.4% from 18 to 24, 33.6% from 25 to 44, 24.2% from 45 to 64, and 6.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 122.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 136.4 males. The median income for

729-557: Was reported missing by her parents, triggering a massive search by law enforcement and townspeople. Ten days later, a volunteer searcher found Lemaire's body in a wooded area. Authorities suspected 61-year-old retiree Charles Smithart of the murder when another local man, Dave DeForest, told police he had observed Smithart driving near Mandy's house on the day she went missing. Police and forensic investigators found considerable trace evidence in Smithart's truck that suggested Mandy's presence in

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