Haida

Haida is the language of the Haida people of the Pacific Northwest coast, spoken on the Haida Gwaii archipelago and the nearby Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. Linguists disagree over its classification: some place it in the Na-Dené family, while others treat it as a language isolate. It falls into Northern and Southern dialect groups, distinguished mainly by phonology.

At the time of the first European contact, the Spanish voyage of Juan Pérez in 1772, Haida had perhaps fifteen thousand speakers. Epidemics then emptied whole village areas. In the 1830s a Haida-based trade pidgin, Haida Jargon, served Haida, Tsimshian, Heiltsuk and English speakers along the coast.