Ahtna or Ahtena 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.
The Ahtna language consists of four different dialects. 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 the Tsilhqot'in people, another Northern Athapaskan group.
There are 80 speakers out of a population of 500, and the language is facing extinction. However, many younger people are learning Ahtna to try to keep the language alive. The Ya Ne Dah Ah School in Sutton, Alaska teaches the Ahtna language as a part of its curriculum.[3][4] As of 2010, a digital archiving project of Ahtna was underway.[5] The subsistence and fishing rights activist Katie John (1915-2013) of Mentasta helped develop an Ahtna alphabet in the 1970s[6] and recorded a pronunciation guide of the Mentasta Dialect.[7][8]
