Russian Far East, more specifically Amur Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai and Sakhalin Oblast
Region
Island of Sakhalin, along the lower Amur River and around the Amur Liman. Formerly, also in the Shantar Islands and parts of Amur Oblast
Ethnicity
4,652 Nivkh
Native speakers
198 (2010 census)[1]
Language family
Language isolate
Early form
Proto-Nivkh
Writing system
Cyrillic, Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3
niv
Glottolog
nivk1234
ELP
Sakhalin Nivkh
Amur Nivkh
Nivkh is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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Nivkh (/ˈniːfk/NEEFK; occasionally also Nivkhic; self-designation: Нивхгу диф, Nivxgu dif, /ɲivxɡudif/), or Gilyak (/ˈɡɪljæk/GIL-yak),[2] or Amuric, is a small language family, often portrayed as a language isolate, of two or three mutually unintelligible languages[3][4] spoken by the Nivkh people in Russian 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.[5]
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.[6] That may have been an overcount, however, as the 2010 census recorded only 198 native speakers, less than 4% of the ethnic population.[7]
Proto-Nivkh(ic), the proto-language ancestral to the modern-day languages, has been reconstructed by Fortescue (2016).[4]
^Nivkh languages at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
^Gruzdeva (1998)
^ abCite error: The named reference Fortescue2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Zgusta, Richard (2015). The Peoples of Northeast Asia Through Time: Precolonial Ethnic and Cultural Processes Along the Coast Between Hokkaido and the Bering Strait. Leiden: Brill. p. 71. ISBN 978-90-04-30043-9.
is a small language family, often portrayed as a language isolate, of two or three mutually unintelligible languages spoken by the Nivkh people in Russian...
languages. Nivkh is divided into four dialects or languages. Nivkh (plural Nivkhgu in the Nivkhlanguage), an endonym, means "person" in the Nivkhlanguage. They...
free dictionary. Nivkh or Amuric or Gilyak may refer to: Nivkh people (Nivkhs) or Gilyak people (Gilyaks) Nivkhlanguage or Gilyak language Gilyak class gunboat...
consequently Ainu languages have been classified critically endangered by UNESCO. In addition, languages such as Orok, Evenki and Nivkh spoken in formerly...
Nivkh alphabets are the alphabets used to write the Nivkhlanguage. During its existence, it functioned on different graphic bases and was reformed several...
with stroke and descender is sometimes used in the writing of the Nivkhlanguages, as a variant of ge with stroke and hook ⟨Ӻ, ӻ⟩. This letter has not...
writing Ket and sometimes Nivkh, and in the transcription of Eskaleut languages. Ge with hook is used in the literature of Nivkh to represent the voiced...
language isolates by continent Lists of languages List of proposed language families "What are the largest language families?". Ethnologue. May 25, 2019...
Finnish in Europe), the Yeniseian languages (linked to Turkic and to the Athabaskan languages of North America), Yukaghir, Nivkh of Sakhalin, Ainu of northern...
Altaic, Korean, Japanese, Ainu, Nivkh/Gilayak, and Chukchi–Kamchatkan), with the exception of Yeniseian, in a proposed language family called Eurasiatic. Such...
that the various languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the...
systematic relationship between the Nivkhlanguage of Sakhalin and the Amur river basin and the Algic languages, and a secondary relationship between...
Nanai, Udege, Chukchi, Koryak and Nivkhlanguages to denote the sound IPA: [t͡ʃ], although in some of these languages in practice, several other alphabets...
also used in Bashkir, Tajik, Karakalpak, Shor, Siberian Tatar and Nivkhlanguages, and formerly in Azerbaijani. It is similar to the letter Ğ found in...
between Nivkh and the Algic languages of North America, and a more distant relationship between these two together and the Wakashan languages of coastal...
The Ainu languages share a noteworthy amount of vocabulary (especially fish names) with several Northeast Asian languages, including Nivkh, Tungusic...
on revitalizing the Nivkhlanguage. He is a critic of the Altaic hypothesis. Janhunen, Juha, ed. (2003). The Mongolic languages. London: Routledge. Janhunen...
2010. p. 43. Retrieved 2011-05-18. Ager, Simon (ed.). "Nivkh (Нивхгу/Nivxgu)". Omniglot: Writing systems & languages of the world. Retrieved 2011-05-18....
several Siberian language isolates, like Nivkh This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Siberian languages. If an internal link...
that there are traces of a pre-Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as Amuric) were once...
the Itelmen and Nivkhlanguages, where it represents the voiceless uvular fricative /χ/. Kha with hook is also used in the Aleut language (Bering dialect)...
Amazonian languages. Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages Ket (possible) Nivkh (possible) Ainu Jiarongic languages Munda languages Northwest Caucasian languages Algonquian...
Uralic languages (/jʊəˈrælɪk/ yoor-AL-ik; by some called Uralian languages /jʊəˈreɪliən/ yoor-AY-lee-ən) form a language family of 42 languages spoken...
Austronesian languages Distribution of Koreanic languages Distribution of Japonic languages Distribution of Ainu languages Distribution of Nivkhlanguages Distribution...
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