[SypeKifef]

An Alaskan court has ruled that Yupik is not a "historically written language", apparently limiting the support that must be given to an already endangered language by the state.

I am not sure what counts as "historical" in Alaska, but I believe Yupik has been an Orthodox liturgical language since the days of the Russian settlement there.

[jeaccatty]

I am not sure what counts as "historical" in Alaska, but I believe Yupik has been an Orthodox liturgical language since the days of the Russian settlement there.

St Innocent created a written version of the Aleut language and translated the Gospel and the service books, but I don't know that he did for Yupik. As I understand it, most of the Alaskan native village Churches consider Slavonic their liturgical language and possibly add in a small portion of the local native language. The city churches generally serve in English, again with the addition of some of the native languages (for example the parish in Juneau reportedly uses a number of different native languages for some of the more common parts of the service.)


Fr David Moser

[SypeKifef]

Thank you, Father, it seems that I may have been confused about this.

Nonetheless a quick search of the internet has brought up a few resources that suggest there was also some material in Yupik (though not nearly as much as I thought - don't worry Michael, your job is safe ).

Orthodox resources in Alaskan languages (some in Yupik going back to the 19th century)
Omniglot page on Yupik
An independent development of writing by a Yupik speaker (not Orthodox, but an interesting story)