Central Alaskan Yupʼik is one of the languages of the Yupik family, in turn a member of the Eskimo–Aleut language group, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska. Both in ethnic population and in number of speakers, the Central Alaskan Yupik people form the largest group among Alaska Natives. As of 2010 Yupʼik was, after Navajo, the second most spoken aboriginal language in the United States. Yupʼik should not be confused with the related language Central Siberian Yupik spoken in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island, nor Naukan Yupik likewise spoken in Chukotka.
The Pledge of Allegiance in Yupʼik. This uses a variant orthography with <gh> instead of <r> to indicate the voiced uvular fricative.
The Yupʼik or Yupiaq and Yupiit or Yupiat (pl), also Central Alaskan Yupʼik, Central Yupʼik, Alaskan Yupʼik, are an Indigenous people of western and southwestern Alaska ranging from southern Norton Sound southwards along the coast of the Bering Sea on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and along the northern coast of Bristol Bay as far east as Nushagak Bay and the northern Alaska Peninsula at Naknek River and Egegik Bay. They are also known as Cupʼik by the Chevak Cupʼik dialect-speaking people of Chevak and Cupʼig for the Nunivak Cupʼig dialect-speaking people of Nunivak Island.
A Nunivak Island Cupʼig man in 1929
A Hooper Bay Askinarmiut boy poses wearing a circular cap (uivqurraq) and fur parka, photograph by Edward S Curtis (1930).
Qasgiq entry in the Yupʼik village of Stebbins (Tapraq), 1900
Wooden qasgiruaq (qasgiq model) with walrus ivory dolls. Ethnological Museum of Berlin.
