Tlingit (Lingít)

1. Introduction & endangerment status

Tlingit (autonym Lingít, 'human/of the people') is a Na-Dene language of the Pacific Northwest Coast, spoken by the Tlingit people across the islands and inlets of southeastern Alaska from Yakutat to Ketchikan, and inland into northern British Columbia and the southern Yukon. Within Na-Dene it is a distinct branch, related more distantly to the large Athabaskan family (Navajo, Dene, Apache) and to Eyak.¹

Tlingit is critically endangered. In 2019 the linguist James Crippen estimated that between 100 and 200 people spoke it as a first language, with the youngest fluent speakers already over the age of sixty; more recent community estimates put the number of fully fluent speakers lower still. At the same time, roughly a hundred or more active learners are working through it in university courses and community programmes.¹

Few endangered languages have a stronger revitalisation infrastructure. In Alaska all twenty Native languages, Tlingit among them, were made official languages of the state in 2014. The Sealaska Heritage Institute established a multi-million-dollar language endowment in 2019 and runs a mentor–apprentice immersion programme; the University of Alaska Southeast offers Tlingit instruction; and the published dictionaries of Tlingit are among the most thorough for any Native language of the region.²

This guide runs through the eight CEFR sub-levels, from the orthography and Tlingit's formidable sound system (A1.1) to oratory and continued study (B2.2), each marked with a visible heading.

Be ready: Tlingit has one of the largest consonant inventories in the Americas — around two dozen-plus consonants — including ejectives (made with a popping glottal closure, written with an apostrophe), a uvular series made far back in the throat, and lateral sounds. It also has tone (high vs. low), marked with accents. Mastering these sounds is the central task of early study and the thing that most rewards listening to recordings.¹

Modern Tlingit is written in a Latin 'popular' orthography developed for community use. Its conventions take practice to read: an apostrophe after a consonant marks an ejective (kʼ, tʼ, chʼ); an underline marks uvular consonants made further back (g̲, x̲, k̲); the digraph 'tl' and barred-l 'ł' write lateral sounds; and acute accents mark high tone (á, é).

Traditional Tlingit had no all-purpose 'hello'; under Euro-American influence, a 'how are you?' phrase is now used as a greeting. The single most important word to learn, though, is the word for thanks.³⁴

Gunalchéesh is more than 'thanks': speakers explain it as carrying the sense 'it would not be possible without you' — gratitude that acknowledges another person's whole contribution. Said well, it is a small act of respect, not a throwaway word.³

Tlingit counts on a base that will feel familiar in its lower reaches. The numerals one to five are:⁴

Higher numerals build on these; because spellings vary across teaching materials, learn six to ten directly from a sourced phrasebook or recording rather than guessing.⁴ A few everyday nouns: héen (water), xʼáatʼ (island), keitl (dog), at xʼéeshi (dry fish). Nouns frequently appear with possessive prefixes (see B1.1).

Tlingit clauses are organised around the verb, which carries an extraordinary amount of information. Basic constituent order is often verb-final in simple sentences, but the real work happens inside the verb. Nouns are commonly marked for possession ('my', 'your') with prefixes, and relationships that English shows with prepositions are shown with postpositions and possessed relational nouns.

At this stage, aim to recognise the subject, the object and the verb in a short glossed sentence, and to notice the possessive prefixes on nouns.

Tlingit nouns inflect lightly compared with the verb, but possession is pervasive and grammatically central: 'my house', 'his canoe' are formed with possessive prefixes, and many spatial notions use 'relational nouns' (literally 'its-underside', 'its-edge') that behave like possessed nouns. Kinship and clan terms are elaborate, reflecting the matrilineal moiety system (Raven and Eagle/Wolf) that organises Tlingit society.

The Tlingit verb is polysynthetic: a single verb word is built from a root plus a long, ordered series of prefixes (and some suffixes) marking subject, object, mode, aspect, and 'classifier' elements that affect voice and valency. Crippen's grammar describes this as a templatic system of ordered prefix positions — the same architectural idea as in the related Athabaskan languages and, intriguingly, as proposed for Yeniseian Ket.¹

The practical lesson mirrors Ket's: you do not conjugate Tlingit verbs by tacking on endings; you learn how the slots are filled. Aspect and mode (rather than simple past/present/future tense) drive the system, so learning a verb means learning its aspectual shapes.

Tlingit has a deep tradition of formal oratory, performed at the ceremonial gatherings called koo.éex' (often translated 'potlatch'). Advanced competence means following connected speech and grasping the elevated register of speeches, which draws on clan history, metaphor and at.óow (sacred clan property). Nora and Richard Dauenhauer's bilingual volumes of Tlingit oratory and life-stories are a celebrated gateway to this material.

At this level, tone and the precise articulation of ejectives and uvulars stop being mechanical hurdles and become part of meaning and style; listening to fluent elders' recordings is indispensable.

The capstone of Tlingit study is participation: learning within the community and its institutions. Continuing resources include James Crippen's grammar of the Tlingit verb, the comprehensive Tlingit dictionaries, the Dauenhauers' text collections, and the courses and mentor–apprentice programmes run by the Sealaska Heritage Institute, Goldbelt Heritage and the University of Alaska Southeast.¹²

For the linguistically curious, pair this guide with our Ket guide: Tlingit (Na-Dene, Alaska) and Ket (Yeniseian, Siberia) sit at the two proposed ends of the Dene-Yeniseian link, and their verbs share the same deep templatic design.

Learning resources

• Sealaska Heritage Institute — Language DepartmentAll levels — courses, mentor–apprentice, resources
• Lingít X̱ʼéináx̱ Sá! = Say It in Tlingit — phrase book (PDF)A1–A2 — greetings, numbers, everyday phrases
• Tlingit Phrases, Colors and Greetings (Chilkat Indian Village)A1 — community phrase list
• Tlingit language — sounds, verb & status (Wikipedia)Reference — phonology & polysynthetic verb