population of 500, and the language is facing extinction. The subsistence and fishing-rights activist Katie John (1915–2013) of Mentasta helped develop an Ahtna alphabet in the 1970s and recorded a pronunciation guide of the Mentasta dialect. In 2012 a facing-bilingual collection of poetry in Ahtna and English, The Indian Prophet, was published by poet John Smelcer. In a revitalization program, the Ya Ne Dah Ah School in Sutton, Alaska teaches the Ahtna language as a part of its curriculum. As of 2010, a digital archiving project of Ahtna was underway. Dialects and bands There are four main dialect divisions and eight bands (tribal unions): Lower Ahtna (endonym ) Chitina/Taral Band Tonsina/Klutina Band Central Ahtna or Middle Ahtna (endonym ) Gulkona/Gakona Band Western Ahtna (own name Tsaay Hwt'aene) Tyone/Mendeltna Band Cantwell/Denali Band Upper Ahtna (endonym ) Sanford River/Chistochina Band Slana/Batzulnetas Band Mentasta Band Vocabulary comparison The comparison of some animal names in the three Athabaskan languages: Phonology Athabaskan languages are primarily prefixing. Many prefixes are presented together. There is limited suffixation and often one word has as much meaning as an English language sentence. Verbs are very complex therefore creating many different meanings or analysis of verbs. Some verbs include syntactic principles in addition to and/or replacement of morphological principles when constructing a word. Consonants The consonants in Kari's IPA phonology and practical orthography are shown in the following table. Vowels The vowels in Kari's practical orthography and phonology are as follows. There is some variation in pronunciation of words according to dialect. Grammar Possessives Possession is indicated by prefixes such as "my", or "his/her", "our"; as in "my mother", (or ) "his/her mother", "our mother". Verb themes Verbs are primarily prefixing. There are often six or more prefixes before the stem and then one or more suffixes. (1a) displays a surface form in Ahtna spelling while (1b) is the verb theme. Three prefixes are present that have to be listed with the stem to make up the form. Anything adjacent in a verb theme can be separated by morphemes in the forms surface. Verb themes display what elements should be listed in a dictionary for a speaker to be able to reconstruct the verb. '#' displays an important word-internal boundary known as a disjunct boundary. '+' indicates a morpheme boundary. In the Ahtna language the verb typically goes after the noun. Noun modification In the Ahtna language, modifiers usually go