Proto-Eskaleut, Proto-Eskimo–Aleut or Proto-Inuit-Yupik-Unangan is the reconstructed common ancestor of the

Eskaleut languages The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...

, family containing Eskimo and

Aleut The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the ...

. Its existence is known through similarities in Eskimo and Aleut. The existence of Proto-Eskaleut is generally accepted among linguists. It was for a long time true that no

linguistic reconstruction Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language t ...

of Proto-Eskaleut had yet been produced, as stated by Bomhard (2008:209). Such a reconstruction was offered by

Knut Bergsland Knut Bergsland (7 March 1914 – 9 July 1998) was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor at the University of Oslo from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic (especially Sami) and Eskaleut languages. Career He was born in K ...

in 1986. Michael Fortescue (1998:124–125) has offered another version of this system, largely based on the reconstruction of

Proto-Eskimo Proto-Eskimoan or Proto-Eskimo is the reconstructed ancestor of the Eskimoan languages. It was spoken by the ancestors of the Yupik and Inuit peoples. It is linguistically related to the Aleut language, and both descend from the Proto-Eskimo–Al ...

in the ''Comparative Eskimo Dictionary'' he co-authored with Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan (1994:xi).

Phonology

Fortescue reconstructs the phoneme inventory of Proto-Eskaleut as follows: Notes:

Possible relation to other language families

There are no generally accepted relations between Proto-Eskaleut and other language families. A substantial case for a genetic relationship between Proto-Eskaleut, Yukaghir and Uralic was published by Michael Fortescue in 1998 in ''Language Relations across Bering Strait'' (see

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 ...

References

Bibliography

* Bergsland, Knut. 1986. "Comparative Eskimo–Aleut phonology and lexicon". ''Journal de la Société finno-ougrienne'' 80:63–137. * Bomhard, Allan R. 2008. ''Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic: Comparative Phonology, Morphology, and Vocabulary'', 2 volumes. Leiden: Brill. * Fortescue, Michael, Steven Jacobson, and Lawrence Kaplan. 1994. ''Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates''. Alaska Native Language Center. * Fortescue, Michael. 1998. ''Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence''. London and New York: Cassell. {{DEFAULTSORT:Proto-Eskaleut language Eskaleut Eskaleut languages