Enrico has compiled a large dictionary of Masset Haida and is engaged in elicitation of Skidegate Haida lexical material and texts from the few aged speakers remaining alive today for the purpose of producing a comprehensive Skidegate/Masset/English dictionary with an English/Skidegate/Masset index. Entries will include syntactic, morphological, and semantic information. Haida has three dialectal variants; the two northern variants, Alaskan and Masset, are much alike and divergent from the southern dialect, Skidegate. Skidegate Haida, though until now less well documented, appears to be more conservative, hence of importance in reconstructing earlier forms of the language and defining the relationships among the dialects. Beyond internal questions, a better understanding of Haida as a whole is crucial to the reconstruction of North American linguistic prehistory. More data are required for effective comparative study to determine whether Haida is truly a language isolate or whether it is related to other languages in the Alaska/Pacific Northwest area. Enrico knows Haida well and enjoys the confidence of the communities where it still survives.
