Atsina is the moribund Algonquian

Algonquian languages

The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...

 ancestral language of the Gros Ventre tribe in Montana

Montana

Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...

. The last fluent speaker died in 1981. Atsina is the name applied by specialists in Algonquian linguistics. Arapaho

Arapaho language

The Arapaho language or hinono'eitiit is a Plains Algonquian language spoken almost entirely by elders in Wyoming, and to a much lesser extent in Oklahoma. It is in great danger of becoming extinct. As of 1996, there were approximately 1,000 speakers of theNorthern 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". Compared with Arapaho proper, Gros Ventre had three additional phonemes /tʲ/, /ts/, and /bʲ/, and lacked the velar fricative /x/.

Further reading

Malainey, Mary E. 2005. The Gros Ventre/Fall Indians in historical and archaeological interpretation. Canadian journal of native studies, 25(1):155-183.

External links

• "Gros Ventre", Ethnologue