Medny Aleut language

Mednyj Aleut
Spoken in	Russia
Region	Commander Islands
Native speakers	5  (2004)
Language family	mixed Aleut–Russian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mud

Mednyj Aleut (Also called Copper Island Creole or Copper Island Aleut) is a nearly extinct mixed language spoken on Bering Island. It is characterized by Aleut nouns and Russian verbs, each with the full inflectional complexity of the source languages. There are only 5 native speakers left.

Mednyj Aleut is characterised by a blending of Russian and Aleut (primarily Attu) elements in most components of the grammar, but most profoundly in the verbal morphology. The Aleut component comprises the majority of the vocabulary, all the derivational morphology, part of the simple sentence syntax, nominal inflection and certain other grammatical means. The Russian components comprises verbal inflection, negation, infinitive forms, part of the simple sentence syntax and all of the compound sentence syntax.^[1]

Originally, the language was spoken in Copper Island, from where it takes its name, but all the population of that island was moved to Bering island in 1970.

Citations

1. ^ Donald Winford. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing. http://books.google.fi/books?id=Lc1DFju-FlYC&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=Copper+Island+Aleut&source=bl&ots=SSpmUW5Q5t&sig=tRwYEYLX6M55ynPQpVWUp1gS44c&hl=fi&ei=-0NhTvbxNJC4tge6zf3tDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CGMQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Copper%20Island%20Aleut&f=false. 

Sources

• http://languageserver.uni-graz.at/ls/art?id=981
• Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages By Christopher Moseley pg 42.
• http://archives.conlang.info/so/gentua/vonjhuanjhian.html