Alaska Natve Languages on Facebook

Yesterday I discovered the Eyak Language Project on Facebook, which led me to wonder how many other ANL's have their own Facebook pages. Here I'm referring not to the "info" pages, which appear to be automatically generated copies of Wikipedia pages, but real groups composed of real people advocating for Native languages. The Eyak page is certainly in this vein. It has been at least a century since Eyak has had as many speakers as this group now has members (currently 52). Soon the page will feature an Eyak word-of-the-week.

Another one of my favorites is the Gwich'in Language page. What I like about this group is the amount of Native language which gets used in the discussions. Many observers have commented on the need to create venues in which endangered languages can be used. Victor Golla has called these "secondary language communities." The Gwich'in page on FB certainly counts as one, encouraging and facilitating language use. Notice that the notoriously complex orthography -- including nasal hooks, tone marks, and barred-l -- does not even get in the way. The desire to communicate trumps the perceived barrier of writing every time.

Moving north and west there's a page for the Iñupiaq Word of the Day. While the posts aren't exactly daily (the latest I could find was more than a month old), they do feature videos demonstrating pronunciation of words and phrases. And users actually make requests for recording particular phrases. With 1922 "likes" this may be the most popular Alaska Native language FB page.

I may have already mentioned the Dena'ina Qunuhdulzex page in previous posts. This is a great information page eighth many photos, though so far not much language use.

I'm sure there are yet more FB pages out there devoted to Alaska Native language. If you know of one, post a comment about it!