The great state of Alaska is influenced by people from all over the globe, and that means many hard to pronounce words. The history of the state reveals it as a melting pot, or perhaps a frozen lake, of those who crave wide open spaces without the constant presence of other people. Those who find the Arctic and the wild spaces irresistible despite the cold have settled down and put their mark on the linguistic map. Alaska also has a diverse history of indigenous cultures that thrive today throughout the state including Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a number of Northern Athabascan cultures. Names of places come from all of them as well as the Russian language, as Russia owned Alaska before it was a U.S. Territory.
With this rich history, place names are crazy combinations of Alaska native languages, tributes to Russian diplomats, and the names of prospectors and dance hall girls who came from all over the world. All this makes for a beautiful array of sounds that combine to form the language of Alaska. However, most of the words are pretty hard to pronounce. Newcomers will be spotted a mile away as soon as one of these words clunks off the tongue. If you know how to pronounce them all, you probably have been in Alaska for far too long.