Gros Ventre language

Atsina, or Gros Ventre (also known as Aaniiih, Ananin, Ahahnelin, Ahe, A’ani, and ʔɔʔɔɔɔniiih),^[3] is the ancestral language of the Gros Ventre people of what is today Montana, United States of America. The last fluent speaker died in 2007,^[1] though revitalization efforts are underway.

Gros Ventre
'ɔ'ɔ́ɔ́ɔ́naakíit'ɔ
Native to	United States
Region	Montana
Ethnicity	Gros Ventre
Extinct	2007, with the death of Theresa Lamebull[1]
Revival	45 self-identified speakers (2009-2013)[2]
Language family	Algic Algonquian Arapahoan Arapaho–Gros Ventre Gros Ventre
Official status
Official language in	United States (Fort Belknap Indian Community, Montana)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ats
Glottolog	gros1243
ELP	Gros Ventre
Historical extent of the language
Gros Ventre is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

History

Atsina is the name applied by specialists in Algonquian linguistics. Arapaho and Atsina are dialects of a common language usually designated by scholars as "Arapaho-Atsina". Historically, this language had five dialects, and on occasion specialists add a third dialect name to the label, resulting in the designation, "Arapaho-Atsina-Nawathinehena".^[1] Compared with Arapaho proper, Gros Ventre had three additional phonemes /tʲ/, /ts/, /kʲ/, and /bʲ/, and lacked the velar fricative /x/.

Theresa Lamebull taught the language at Fort Belknap College (now Aaniiih Nakoda College), and helped develop a dictionary using the Phraselator when she was 109.^[4]

As of 2012, the White Clay Immersion School at Aaniiih Nakoda College was teaching the language to 26 students, up from 11 students in 2006.^[3][5]

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	plain	b ⟨b⟩		t ⟨t⟩		k ⟨k⟩	ʔ ⟨’⟩
	palatalized	bʲ ⟨bʸ⟩		tʲ ⟨tʸ⟩		kʲ ⟨kʸ⟩
Fricative			θ ⟨3⟩	s ⟨s⟩			h ⟨h⟩
Affricate				ts ⟨c⟩	tʃ ⟨č⟩
Nasal				n ⟨n⟩
Approximant		w ⟨w⟩			j ⟨y⟩

Vowels

	Short	Long
Close	ɪ ⟨i⟩	iː ⟨ii⟩
Mid	ɛ ⟨e⟩	eː ⟨ee⟩
Back	ɔ ⟨o⟩	oː ⟨oo⟩
	ʊ ⟨u⟩	uː ⟨uu⟩

^[6]