Article

Name: Alaskan Russian: the history of field trips to the former overseas colony of Russia

Authors: M. K. Raskladkina, M. B. Bergelson, A. A. Kibrik

ScanEx ltd, Moscow, Russia; National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia; Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

In the section Полевые исследования

Abstract:

The article describes the history of studying Alaskan Russian (AR), a language that emerged from interac-tions between Russian furtraders and the aboriginal population during the Russian colonization of Alaska. In the late 18th century, AR became the native language of mixed-race persons who were officially referred to as “creoles” in the 19th century. AR was actively used in Alaska until the mid-20th century. Currently, several advanced-age individuals retain linguistic competence in AR. Since 1997, the authors have organized six field trips to the places of the historical existence of AR. The article follows the chronology of these trips, explaining their goals and findings. Interdisciplinary studies allowed the authors to compile a dictionary of the Ninilchik variety of AR, describe its phonetic and grammatical features, and collect corpora of audio and video recordings and sociolinguistic interviews to explore various linguistic practices. These corpora in-clude over 90 hours of recordings from over 30 consultants from 12 locations in Alaska. Over 100 additional interviews were found in the repositories of other projects on the oral history of Alaska. Furthermore, several archival documents were discovered revealing the written mode of AR, previously only known as a spoken language. The anthropological research conducted in the Kodiak archipelago started the systematic historical study of the Russian language in Alaska, including its role, place, significance, practices, and functioning in the life of Russian fur-traders and their descendants throughout the colonization of Alaska until the present time, taking into account its interactions with native languages and English.

Keywords: Alaska, Russian America, creoles, Alaskan Russian

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