Na-dené

The Na-dené languages are a family of Native North American tongues grouped into two branches: Tlingit on the coast and islands of southeast Alaska, and Eyak-Athabaskan, which comprises Eyak of Alaska's south-central coast and the widespread Athabaskan, or Dene, languages.

Athabaskan speech runs from Alaska and the Yukon through western Canada to Oregon and northern California, with a separate southern cluster, Apachean, in the American Southwest.

These languages are built around complex verbs woven from many prefixes, and several use tone to distinguish words. They were long carried only by oral tradition: the first Tlingit words were recorded by a French expedition in 1786, and Russian Orthodox missionaries later gave Tlingit a Cyrillic alphabet and printed religious works in it.