Alaskan Russian

Alaskan Russian, known locally as Old Russian, is a dialect of Russian, influenced by Eskimo–Aleut languages, spoken in what is now the U.S. state Alaska since the Russian colonial period. Today it is prevalent on Kodiak Island and in Ninilchik, Alaska; it has been isolated from other varieties of Russian for over a century.

Dialects

Kodiak Russian was natively spoken on Afognak Strait until the Great Alaskan earthquake and tsunami of 1964. It is now moribund, spoken by only a handful of elderly people, and is virtually undocumented.
Ninilchik Russian is better studied and more vibrant; it developed from the Russian colonial settlement of Ninilchik in 1847.

Vocabulary

Ninilchik Russian vocabulary is distinctly Russian, with a few borrowings from English and Alaskan native languages.
Below is a comparison between some examples of Alaskan Russian from the village of Ninilchik and modern standard Russian, using a transcription of modern Russian that follows the same scheme. As in standard Russian, most consonants also have a palatalized form, which is marked by an apostrophe, as in. Words with multiple syllables have stress marked with an acute accent.