Yukaghir is one of the world's primary language families, today reduced to two surviving languages, Tundra Yukaghir and Kolyma Yukaghir, plus two extinct varieties, Omok and Chuvan, spoken by the Yukaghir people of the Kolyma River basin in the Russian Far East. The languages once spread more widely across northeastern Siberia, from the Anadyr River in the east to the Lena River in the west, and Russia's 2020 census recorded 516 people reporting Yukaghir as a native language; the family is classified as moribund. Yukaghir has no demonstrated relationship to any other family, though a Uralic-Yukaghir grouping has been proposed, and the linguist Michael Fortescue has suggested a still broader Uralo-Siberian connection also linking Eskimo-Aleut.
Facts
RegionRussian Far East, in the basin of the Kolyma River 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusA small family of two closely related surviving languages, Tundra and Kolyma Yukaghir, remnants of what was once one of the dominant language groups of northeastern Siberia; a wider relationship to the Uralic languages has been proposed (the putative Uralic-Yukaghir family), and Michael Fortescue has argued for a still broader Uralo-Siberian grouping with Eskimo-Aleut, neither confirmed. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Yukaghir Languages
Wikimedia FoundationIntroduction, first sentence
spoken by the Yukaghir in the Russian Far East living in the basin of the Kolyma River
Possible relationship to other language families section
it has been suggested that they are distantly related to the Uralic languages, thus forming the putative Uralic-Yukaghir language family
History and geography section
The number of Yukaghir speakers fell from 604 in the 2002 Russian census to 516 who reported speaking it as their native language in 2020-2021.
View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.