The Russian language in the Cook Inlet area: Self-identification in the situation of cultural isolation

Ninilchik Russian is a unique variety of the Russian language. The authors believe it is a remnant of Alaskan Russian - a language that emerged at the end of the 18th century as a result of Russian colonial presence in Alaska and served as a means of communication in Russian America until the end of the Russian period in 1867. By that time Alaskan Russian became the native language for the people of mixed Russian/Native origin (Creoles) residing in various parts of Alaska. As a result, some varieties of Alaskan Russian kept developing and serving as a means of communication, creating and maintaining cultural identity of local communities long after the "Russian period". Ninilchik was one such places and, due to many factors combined, became a major location where this linguistic variety survived till the beginning of this century. It is obvious that in Russian colonial times some forms of Russian were spoken in every place where Russian presence was noticeable. What is not obvious and demands special research is proving that at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries there existed a lingua franca which emerged as a result of contact between Russian and the indigenous languages of Alaska. The authors believe that this lingua franca was a specific variety of the Russian language of that time. At the beginning of the 21st century, we can only glimpse that variety by the "iceberg tip" in the form spoken by representatives of the Ninilchik community. This situation is like what archaeologists face when they reconstruct a culture from the presently available remnants. In this paper, The authors provide new data from their 2017 field-work including two stages of the creolization/de-creolization process: Alutiiq-Russian bilin-gualism and Russian monolingualism. Contacts between the Alutiiq population around the Kenai Peninsula and the Russian-speaking Ninilchik residents continued up to the 20th century; in such communities as Nan-walek and Port Graham Russian was spoken until recently. As always in the case of sparsely populated areas, the role of individuals and specific circumstances would have crucial impact on the linguistic choices in the community. The authors explored such an individual case in Nanwalek. In exploring the Russian monolingual stage of Alaskan Russian, The authors pay attention to the fact that the so-called "Russian" population of Russian America represented many regional, social and ethnic groups, which influenced the development of Alaskan Russian, its resulting form, and its significant variation among families and individuals. The second, less discussed, but probably even more important fact is that Alaskan Russian has always existed as an oral language. For a number of years crucial to its development Ninilchik Russian did not experience any influences of any kind from written languages: it was a monolingual community where the overwhelming majority was illiterate.

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