The Ahtna language consists of four different dialects: Upper, Central, Lower, and Western.

The similar name Atnah occurs in the journals of Simon Fraser and other early European diarists in what is now British Columbia as a reference to the Tsilhqot'in people, another Northern Athapaskan group.

The Ahtna language comes from the proto-Athabaskan language, believed to have evolved 5,000 to 10,000 years ago when humans migrated from Eurasia to North America over the Bering land bridge (Beringia), when it was dried up and exposed creating a natural land bridge.

Within the past century more than one hundred words have made their way into the Ahtna vocabulary mostly due to influence from English.

[4] The Ahtna region consists of the Copper River Basin and the Wrangell Mountains.

The Ahtna Region is bordered by the Nutzotin river in the Northeast and the Alaska Range in the North.

There are eight villages within the Ahtna Region: Cantwell, Chistochina, Chitina, Copper Center, Gakona, Gulkana, Mentasta and Tazlina.

[9] [10] In 2012 a facing-bilingual collection of poetry in Ahtna and English, The Indian Prophet, was published by poet John Smelcer.

In a revitalization program, the Ya Ne Dah Ah School in Sutton, Alaska teaches the Ahtna language as a part of its curriculum.

Examples of this include the name of the deity or trickster figure Saghani Ggaay, where saghani is the noun "raven" and ggaay the adjective "little, small" or in the term nen ten "permafrost", a combination of nen "land, ground" and ten "frozen".