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Amuric Languages
Nivkh (; occasionally also Nivkhic; self-designation: Нивхгу диф, ''Nivxgu dif'', ), or Gilyak (), or Amuric, is a small language family, often portrayed as a language isolate, of two or three mutually unintelligible languages spoken by the Nivkh people in Outer Manchuria, in the basin of the Amgun (a tributary of the Amur), along the lower reaches of the Amur itself, and on the northern half of Sakhalin. "Gilyak" is the Russian rendering of terms derived from the Tungusic "Gileke" and Manchu-Chinese "Gilemi" (Gilimi, Gilyami) for culturally similar peoples of the Amur River region, and was applied principally to the Nivkh in Western literature. The population of ethnic Nivkhs has been reasonably stable over the past century, with 4,549 Nivkhs counted in 1897 and 4,673 in 1989. However, the number of native speakers of the Nivkh language among these dropped from 100% to 23.3% in the same period, so by the 1989 census there were only 1,079 first-language speakers left. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gilaki Language
The Gilaki language ( ) is an Iranian language of the Northwestern branch, spoken in Iran's Gilan Province. Gilaki is closely related to Mazandarani and the two languages have similar vocabularies. Though the Persian language has influenced Gilaki to a great extent, Gilaki remains an independent language with a northwestern Iranian origin. The Gilaki and Mazandarani languages (but not other Iranian languages) share certain typological features with Caucasian languages (specifically South Caucasian languages),Academic American Encyclopedia By Grolier Incorporated, page 294The Tati language group in the sociolinguistic context of Northwestern Iran and Transcaucasia By D.Stilo, pages 137-185 reflecting the history, ethnic identity, and close relatedness to the Caucasus region and Caucasian peoples of the Gilak people and Mazandarani people. Classification The language is divided into three dialects: Western Gilaki, Eastern Gilaki and Galeshi/Deylami.«محمود رنجبر ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The number of language isolates is unknown. A language isolate is unrelated to any other, which makes it the only language in its own language family. It is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic") relationships—one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. One explanation for the existence of language isolates is that they might be the last remaining branch of a larger language family. The language possibly had relatives in the past which have since disappeared without being documented. Another explanation for language isolates is that they developed in isolation from other languages. This explanation mostly applies to sign languages that have arisen independently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chukotko-Kamchatkan Languages
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 branch is moribund, represented only by Western Itelmen, with only 4 or 5 elderly speakers left. The Chukotkan branch had close to 7,000 speakers left (as of 2010, the majority being speakers of Chukchi), with a reported total ethnic population of 25,000. While the family is sometimes grouped typologically and geographically as Paleosiberian, no external genetic relationship has been widely accepted as proven. The most popular such proposals have been for links with Eskimo–Aleut, either alone or in the context of a wider grouping. Alternative names Less commonly encountered names for the family are Chukchian, Chukotian, Chukotan, Kamchukchee and Kamchukotic. Of these, ''Chukchian'' and ''Chukotian'' are ambiguous, since both terms are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mosan Languages
Mosan is a hypothetical language family consisting of the Salishan, Wakashan, and Chimakuan languages of the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It was proposed by Edward Sapir in 1929 in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Little evidence has been adduced in favor of such a grouping, no progress has been made in reconstructing it, and it is now thought to reflect a language area rather than a genealogical relationship. The term persists outside academic linguistic literature because of Sapir's stature. An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tungusic Languages
The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the dozen living languages of the Tungusic language family. Some linguists consider Tungusic to be part of the controversial Altaic language family, along with Turkic, Mongolic, and sometimes Koreanic and Japonic. The term "Tungusic" is from an exonym for the Evenk people (Ewenki) used by the Yakuts ("tongus"). It was borrowed into Russian as "тунгус", and ultimately transliterated into English as "Tungus". Classification Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics. Some scholars have criticized the tree-based model of Tungusic classification, arguing the long history of contact among the Tungusic langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korean Language
Korean ( South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographically Korea), but over the past years of political division, the two Koreas have developed some noticeable vocabulary differences. Beyond Korea, the language is recognised as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture and Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible with each other. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ainu Language
Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate with no academic consensus of origin. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Until the 20th century, the Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu and the now-extinct Kuril Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu – were spoken throughout Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands. Due to the colonization policy employed by the Japanese government, the number of Hokkaido Ainu speakers decreased through the 20th century, and it is now moribund. A very few elderly people still speak the language fluently, though attempts are being made to revive it. According to P. Elmer, the Ainu languages are a contact language, having strong influences from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleosiberian Languages
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 and the Russian Far East. 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, 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 and isolates are usually considered to be Paleo-Siberian languages: # 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poronay River
The Poronay (russian: Поронай, ja, 幌内川) is the longest river on the island of Sakhalin in Russia. It flows in a southerly direction through Tym, Smirnykhovsky and Poronaysky Districts. Geography The river begins on Mt. Nevel in the East Sakhalin Mountains, flows south through the swampy wetlands of the Tym-Poronay Valley, and enters the Sea of Okhotsk in the Gulf of Patience. before it enters the sea, the river divides into two arms, which flow into the sea apart from each other. The two branches create a marshy river island in the middle. The town of Poronaysk is located near the western mouth of the river. The Poronay is crossed by only two bridges, one rail and one road bridge. Both bridges are next to each other, in the middle of the river between the towns of Pobedino and Pervomaysk. The river valley, especially the area between the downstream Poronay and the Deer River (a small river to the east), has many lakes. The Poronay river system is a rich breed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tymy River
The Tym (russian: Тымь) is a river on the island of Sakhalin, Russia, and the second longest river on the island after the Poronay. It is long, and has a drainage basin of . The name of the river is translated from Nivkh as "spawning river." The river flows through Tymovsky and Nogliki Districts of Sakhalin Oblast. It begins on the southern slopes of Mount Lopatin in the East Sakhalin Mountains, flows through swampy lowlands in the Tym-Poronaiskaya Valley, and finally flows into Nyisky Bay in the Sea of Okhotsk. The villages of Tymovskoye and Nogliki are located beside the river. The river is mostly fed by snowmelt. The Tym freezes between November and early December, and the spring break occurs between the end of April and May.Тымь |
Dialect Continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around the world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India, varieties of Arabic across north Africa and southwest Asia, the Turkic languages, the Varieties of Chinese, Chinese languages or dialects, and subgroups of the Romance languages, Romance, Germanic languages, Germanic and Slavic languages, Slavic families in Europe. Leonard Bloomfield used the name dialect area. Charles F. Hockett used the term L-complex. Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Fortescue
Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946) is a British-born linguistics, linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Greenlandic language, Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi language, Chukchi and Nitinaht language, Nitinaht. He gained his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1978. Fortescue is known for his reconstructions of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, Eskimo–Aleut, Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh language, Nivkh, and Wakashan languages, Wakashan proto-languages. Education He was educated at Abingdon School. Career He is professor emeritus of General Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen and chairman of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen. His ''Comparative Eskimo Dictionary'', co-authored with Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan, is the standard work in its area, as is his ''Comparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan Dictionary''. In his book ''Whiteheadian Linguistics'', Fortescue explores the possib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
