Na-Dene

American  

[nah-dey-nee, nah-dey-ney] / nɑˈdeɪ ni, ˌnɑ deɪˈneɪ /

Or Nadene

noun

1. a group of North American Indian languages, comprising the Athabascan family, Eyak, Tlingit, and Haida, hypothetically considered to be descendants of a single protolanguage: the genetic relationship of either Tlingit or Haida to Athabascan and Eyak is now disputed.

2. the hypothesized protolanguage itself.

---

adjective

1. of, belonging to, or pertaining to Na-Dene.

Na-Dene British  

/ nəˈdiːn, nɑːˈdeɪnɪ /

noun

1. a phylum of North American Indian languages including Athapascan, Tlingit, and Haida

---

Etymology

Origin of Na-Dene

First recorded in 1915; name coined by Edward Sapir from assumed reflexes of a single Na-Dene root: Haida na “to live, house,” Tlingit na “people,” unattested Athabascan -ne in dene, representing a word in Athabascan languages for “person, people,” e.g., Navajo diné

Example Sentences

The researchers also study how these ancient peoples are related to modern populations who speak Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene and other languages.

From Nature

This tangled family tree underpins the ancestry of modern speakers of indigenous Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages.

From Science Magazine

Using glottochronology he estimated that the ancestors of Aleuts had crossed the strait around 2000 b.c. and that the ancestors of Na-Dene had made the journey around 7000 B.C.

From Literature

But in 2008, Edward Vajda, a linguist at Western Washington University, said he had documented a relationship between Yeniseian, a group of mostly extinct languages spoken along the Yenisei River in central Siberia, and Na-Dene.

From New York Times

The second and third migrations have left an impact only in Arctic populations whose languages belong to the Eskimo-Aleut family and in the Canadian Chipewyan who speak a language that belongs to the Na-Dene family.

From BBC