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.

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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

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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 Na-Dene migration from Beringia came after the main migration of 15,000 years ago, but the relationship between the two populations remains to be settled.

From New York Times • Mar. 12, 2014

The eastward group reached North America and became the Na-Dene speakers, while the westward group returned to Siberia and settled along the Yenisei River.

From New York Times • Mar. 12, 2014

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 • Mar. 12, 2014

The Na-Dene languages are spoken in Alaska and western Canada, with two outliers in the American Southwest, Navajo and Apache.

From New York Times • Mar. 12, 2014

He discovered that Indians formed “three New World dental clusters” corresponding to Greenberg’s Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann