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Paleosiberian (or Paleo-Siberian) languages or Paleoasian (Paleo-Asiatic) (from , "ancient") are several linguistic isolates and small families of languages spoken in parts of northeastern
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
and the
Russian Far East The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admin ...
. They are not known to have any genetic 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 The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia ( Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turki ...
, that have largely displaced them. Even more recently, Turkic (at least in Siberia) and especially Tungusic have been displaced in their turn by Russian.


Classifications

Four small
language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hi ...
and isolates are usually considered to be Paleo-Siberian languages: # The
Chukotko-Kamchatkan The Chukotko-Kamchatkan or Chukchi–Kamchatkan languages are a language family of extreme northeastern Siberia. Its speakers traditionally were indigenous hunter-gatherers and reindeer-herders. Chukotko-Kamchatkan is endangered. The Kamchatkan ...
family, sometimes known as Luoravetlan, includes Chukchi and its close relatives, Koryak, Alutor and Kerek.
Itelmen The Itelmens ( Itelmen: Итәнмән, russian: Ительмены) are an indigenous ethnic group of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan langu ...
, also known as Kamchadal, is also distantly related. Chukchi, Koryak and Alutor are spoken in easternmost Siberia by communities numbering in the thousands (Chukchi) or hundreds (Koryak and Alutor). Kerek is extinct, and Itelmen is now spoken by fewer than 5 people, mostly elderly, on the west coast of the
Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (russian: полуостров Камчатка, Poluostrov Kamchatka, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and w ...
. # Nivkh (Gilyak, Amuric) consists of two or three languages spoken in the lower
Amur The Amur (russian: река́ Аму́р, ), or Heilong Jiang (, "Black Dragon River", ), is the world's tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China (Inner Manchuria). The Amur proper is long ...
basin and on the northern half of
Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh ...
island. It has a recent modern literature. # The Yeniseian languages were a small family formerly spoken on the middle
Yenisei River The Yenisey (russian: Енисе́й, ''Yeniséy''; mn, Горлог мөрөн, ''Gorlog mörön''; Buryat: Горлог мүрэн, ''Gorlog müren''; Tuvan: Улуг-Хем, ''Uluğ-Hem''; Khakas: Ким суғ, ''Kim suğ''; Ket: Ӄук, ...
and its tributaries, but are now represented only by
Ket Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of the Kentucky state governme ...
, spoken in the
Turukhansk Turukhansk (russian: Туруха́нск) is a rural locality (a '' selo'') and the administrative center of Turukhansky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located north of Krasnoyarsk, at the confluence of the Yenisey and Nizhnyaya Tu ...
district of
Krasnoyarsk Krai Krasnoyarsk Krai ( rus, Красноя́рский край, r=Krasnoyarskiy kray, p=krəsnɐˈjarskʲɪj ˈkraj) is a federal subject of Russia (a krai), with its administrative center in the city of Krasnoyarsk, the third-largest city in Si ...
by no more than 200 people. # Yukaghir is spoken in two mutually unintelligible varieties in the lower
Kolyma Kolyma (russian: Колыма́, ) is a region located in the Russian Far East. It is bounded to the north by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean, and by the Sea of Okhotsk to the south. The region gets its name from the Kolyma River ...
and
Indigirka The Indigirka ( rus, Индиги́рка, r=; sah, Индигиир, translit=Indigiir) is a river in the Sakha Republic in Russia between the Yana to the west and the Kolyma to the east. It is long. The area of its basin is . History The i ...
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 The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...
. On the basis of morphological, typological, and lexical evidence,
Michael Fortescue Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946) is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. He gained his PhD in Linguistics from the University of ...
suggests that Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Nivkh (Amuric) are related, forming a larger ''Chukotko-Kamchatkan-Amuric'' language family. Fortescue does not consider Yeniseian and Yukaghir to be genetically related to Chukotko-Kamchatkan-Amuric.


Relationships

The purpose of the existence of Paleosiberian itself lies in its practicability and remains a grouping of convenience for a variety of unclassifiable languages isolates located in Northeast Eurasia. Some proposals for the relationship of languages located within the Paleosiberian group have been made by some scholars, including
Edward Vajda Edward J. Vajda ( Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, September 10, 1958 as Edward M. Johnson; changed his name in 1981) is a historical linguist at Western Washington University. He is known for his work on the proposed Dené–Yeniseian language f ...
, who suggests them to be related to the
Na-Dené Na-Dene (; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included, but is now considered ...
and Eskimo–Aleut families of
Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...
and northern
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
. This would correlate with the widespread idea that 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 the now largely extinct Yeniseian family, has been linked to the Na-Dené languages of North America. Dené–Yeniseian has been called "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative-historical linguistics". In the past, attempts to connect it to
Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
, North Caucasian and
Burushaski Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people ...
have been made.
Kim Bang-han Kim Bang-han was a South Korean linguist. He proposed primitive Korean peninsula language theory. Primitive Korean peninsula language is a now-extinct non- Koreanic languages that some linguists believe were formerly spoken in central and souther ...
proposed that placename glosses in the ''Samguk sagi'' reflect the original language of the Korean peninsula and a component in the formation of both Korean and Japanese. It is suggested that this language was related to Nivkh in some form.
Juha Janhunen Juha Janhunen (born 12 February 1952 in Pori, Finland) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongolic languages. Since 1994 he has been Professor in East Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on ...
suggests the possibility that similar consonant stop systems in Koreanic and Nivkh may be due to ancient contact.
Martine Robbeets Martine Robbeets is a Belgian comparative linguist. She is known for the Transeurasian languages hypothesis, which groups the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages together into a single language family. Education Robbee ...
suggests that Proto-Korean had a Nivkh substrate influence. Further parallel developments in their sound inventory (Old to Middle Korean and Proto-Nivkh to Nivkh) as well as commonalities in the syntax between Koreanic and Nivkh specifically have been observed. The Ob-Ugric and
Samoyedic languages The Samoyedic () or Samoyed languages () are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 25,000 people altogether. They derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Samoyedic, and form a branch of the Urali ...
predate the spread of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, but are part of the well established larger
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...
family, thus not Paleosiberian. Yukaghir has often been suggested as a more distant relative of Uralic as part of the Uralic-Yukaghir languages, as well as Eskimo-Aleut as part of the
Uralo-Siberian languages Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskaleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his b ...
.Fortescue, Michael. 1998. ''Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence.'' London and New York: Cassell. . However, these hypotheses are controversial and not universally accepted.


Vocabulary comparison

Below are selected basic vocabulary items in proto-languages reconstructed for Paleosiberian languages and language families.
Proto-Yeniseian Proto-Yeniseian is the reconstruction of the language from which all Yeniseian languages are descended from. It is uncertain whether Proto-Yeniseian had a similar tone/pitch accent system as Ket Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a state ...
,
Proto-Uralic Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differenti ...
, Proto-Ainu,
Ainu Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *Ainu people, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East *Ainu languages, a family of languages **Ainu language of Hokkaido **Kuril Ainu language, extinct language of the Kuril Islands **Sakhalin Ainu la ...
, Proto-Korean and Proto-Japanese are also given for comparison. Notes: C = Proto-Chukotian; I = Proto-Inuit


See also

* Ostyak, a Russian name for indigenous languages of Siberia *
Uralo-Siberian languages Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskaleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his b ...
*
Eurasiatic languages Eurasiatic is a proposed language macrofamily that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia. The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's pro ...
* Dene-Yeniseian languages


Notes


Further reading

*


External links

*Вернер Г. К
Палеоазиатские языки
// Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь. — М.: СЭ, 1990. {{Authority control History of Northeast Asia