Akmavet

to the unseen across

This website was created by Baxter Bond, a research engineer and Yup'ik language enthusiast. He graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a B.A. in 2017 and a B.S. 2018. Sometimes he shares his thoughts, project experiences, photography, and various other interesting tidbits.

Akmavet is a Yugtun (i.e. the Yup'ik language) adverb coming from the demonstrative pronoun "akemna". When the system of demonstrative pronouns is compared to English, the Yugtun system is very highly developed. In English, there are only two, "this" and "that". In Yugtun, there are 30, which is more than what the author is willing to list. They are encoded by three categories in relation to the speaker. Two categories of accessibility, three categories of restriction, and five categories of location or movement. Akemna is something away from the speaker, obscured (i.e. can't be seen from the speaker), and across a barrier. Akmavet is the adverb form of the aforementioned pronoun.