Udach' Kuqax*a'a'ch

On January 21st, Marie Smith Jones, the last remaining speaker of the Alaskan Eyak language, died. You can find the story here in The Economist, where the author gives us a linguistic snapshot of the world of Smith Jones:

BEYOND the town of Cordova, on Prince William Sound in south-eastern Alaska, the Copper River delta branches out in silt and swamp into the gulf. Marie Smith, growing up there, knew there was a particular word in Eyak, her language, for the silky, gummy mud that squished between her toes. It was c'a. The driftwood she found on the shore, 'u'l, acquired a different name if it had a proper shape and was not a broken, tangled mass. If she got lost among the flat, winding creeks her panicky thoughts were not of north, south, east or west, but of “upriver”, “downstream”, and the tribes, Eskimo and Tlingit, who lived on either side. And if they asked her name it was not Marie but Udachkuqax*a'a'ch, “a sound that calls people from afar”.

An older article from The Economist says that at least one language is lost every day.