The Alutiiq language is officially called Sugt'stun, though throughout this program we will often call it simply "the Alutiiq language," or "Alutiiq." To speak Sugt'stun means, literally, to speak, "like a person." Sugt'stun belongs to the Esk-Aleut language family. The two main branches of this family tree are the Aleut language, spoken by the Unangan, or Aleut people of the Aleutian chain, and the Eskimoan languages. These two language branches spit off from each other about 9,000 years ago. The Alutiiq language is part of the Eskimoan branch, along with the Yup'ik languages of Western Alaska and Siberia, and the Inupiaq, or Inuit language of Northern Alaska and Canada. The relationships between these Native languages is shown in the diagram below:

Figure 1. Esk-Aleut Language Tree:

Modified from the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, 1984

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One of the most important things to learn about Alutiiq is that it is a language of suffixation. Suffixes, which are added to the ends of words, create new meanings and allow you to build words into sentences. To make an Alutiiq sentence, you cannot simply look up words in the dictionary and string them together. You must know a whole system of suffixes in order to make a proper Alutiiq sentence. This does not mean however, that the average person cannot become aware of the structure of Alutiiq and begin to understand the basics of the language. In fact, our fluent Elders never took a language lesson; their childhood was simply filled with the sounds of Alutiiq, providing them with volumes of linguistic knowledge.

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The decline of the Alutiiq language did not begin, as many would assume, with the arrival of Russian fur traders and explorers. Many Alutiiq men and women learned Russian in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but most Native families continued to use Alutiiq in daily life. The Russian Orthodox Church incorporated Native languages into their mission, rather than enforce a Russian-only policy. Those who were bilingual and also educated in Russian church schools were among the first to help Alutiiq become a written language. This first form of written Alutiiq was in the Cyrillic alphabet. Most of these texts were translations of church texts, such as the Lord's Prayer and the Gospel of St. Matthew (Black 2001).

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