Yugtun
Encyclopedia
Yugtun is a dialect of Central Alaskan Yup'ik
spoken in Central Alaska
. A syllabic script
, now referred to as the Yugtun script
, was invented in the early 1900s by Uyaquk
to write the language.
Central Alaskan Yup'ik language
Central Alaskan Yup'ik or just Yup'ik is a Yupik language of the Eskimo language family, in turn a member of the Eskimo–Aleut language group, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska. Both in ethnic population and in number of speakers, Central Alaskan Yup'ik is the largest of the languages...
spoken in Central Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
. A syllabic script
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
, now referred to as the Yugtun script
Yugtun script
The Yugtun or Alaska script is a syllabary invented around the year 1900 by Uyaquk to write the Yugtun dialect of Central Alaskan Yup'ik. Uyaquk, who was monolingual in Yup'ik, initially used indigenous pictograms as a form of proto-writing that served as a mnemonic in preaching the Bible...
, was invented in the early 1900s by Uyaquk
Uyaquk
Uyaquq was a Yupik Moravian missionary and linguistic genius who went from being an illiterate adult to inventing a series of writing systems for his native language and then producing translations of the Bible and other religious works in a period of five years.Uyaquk was born in into a family of...
to write the language.