Paleosiberian languages

Paleosiberian
(geographic)
Geographic distribution:	North Asia
Linguistic classification:	Not a single family
Subdivisions:	Chukotko-Kamchatkan Yukaghir Nivkh Yeniseian (may be part of Dené–Yeniseian) Eskimo–Aleut (sometimes included) Ainu (sometimes included)
Glottolog:	None

Paleosiberian (Palaeosiberian, Paleo-Siberian) languages or Paleoasian languages (Palaeo-Asiatic) (from Greek palaios, "ancient") is a term of convenience used in linguistics to classify a disparate group of linguistic isolates as well as a few small families of languages spoken in parts both of northeastern Siberia and of the Russian Far East. They are not known to have any linguistic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated the more dominant languages, particularly Tungusic and latterly Turkic languages, that have largely displaced them. Even more recently, Turkic (at least in Siberia) and especially Tungusic, have been displaced in their turn by Russian. It is possible that the Merkits spoke a Paleosiberian language.

The total number of speakers of the Paleo-Siberian languages is approximately 23,000 people.

Classifications

Four small language families and isolates comprise the Paleo-Siberian languages:

1. The Chukotko-Kamchatkan family, sometimes known as Luoravetlan, includes Chukchi and its close relatives, Koryak, Alutor and Kerek. Itelmen, also known as Kamchadal, is also distantly related. Chukchi, Koryak and Alutor are spoken in easternmost Siberia by communities numbering in the thousands. Kerek is extinct, and Itelmen is now spoken by fewer than 100 people, mostly elderly, on the west coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
2. Yukaghir is spoken in two mutually unintelligible varieties in the lower Kolyma and Indigirka valleys. Other languages, including Chuvantsy, spoken further inland and further east, are now extinct. Yukaghir is held by some to be related to the Uralic languages.
3. Nivkh is spoken in the lower Amur basin and on the northern half of Sakhalin island. It has a recent modern literature.
4. Ket is spoken in the central Yenisei river basin in the Turukhansk district of Krasnoyarsk Krai by no more than 200 people. It is known to be the last remnant of a small language subfamily, the Yeniseian languages, formerly spoken on the middle Yenisei and its tributaries. (Whether Ket should be considered an isolate is therefore a matter of definition: historically speaking, it is not.)

Ainu is sometimes added to this group though it is not, strictly speaking, a language of Siberia. It barely survives in southern Sakhalin where it was the main native language. It was also spoken in the Kuril Islands and on Hokkaidō, where a strong interest in its revival is taking place. Attempts have been made to relate it to many other language families, including Altaic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Nihali, and the putative Indo-Pacific stock.

Together with Japanese and Korean which are major modern languages, these 'poor relations' resist any easy or obvious linguistic classification, either with other groups or with each other. Languages within the Paleo-Siberian group are thought by some to be related to the Na-Dené and Eskimo–Aleut families, which survive in slightly larger numbers in Alaska and northern Canada. This would back several theories that some of North America's aboriginal peoples migrated from present-day Siberia and other regions of Asia when the two continents were joined during the last ice age.

Ket, or more precisely Yeniseian as a whole, has been linked in a proposal to the Na-Dené languages of North America. In the past, attempts have been made to relate it to Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, and Burushaski.

See also

• Ostyak, a Russian name for indigenous languages of Siberia
• Uralic–Yukaghir languages
• Uralo-Siberian languages
• Eurasiatic languages
• Dene-Yeniseian languages

External links

• Вернер Г. К. Палеоазиатские языки [1] // Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь. — М.: СЭ, 1990. (Russian)