Koryaks are an indigenous people of the Russian Far East, who live immediately north of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Kamchatka Krai and inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea. The cultural borders of the Koryaks include Tigilsk in the south and the Anadyr basin in the north.
Paleosiberianlanguages or Paleoasian (Paleo-Asiatic) 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 and especially Tungusic have been displaced in their turn by Russian.
Chukchi, also known as Chukot, is a Chukotko–Kamchatkan language spoken by the Chukchi people in the easternmost extremity of Siberia, mainly in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. According to the 2002 census, about 7,000 of the 15,700 Chukchi people speak Chukchi; knowledge of the language is decreasing, and most Chukchi now speak Russian.
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, with a reported total ethnic population of 25,000.
Alyutor or Alutor is a language of Russia that belongs to the Chukotkan branch of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages.
Koryak is a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language spoken by about 1,700 people as of 2010 in the easternmost extremity of Siberia, mainly in Koryak Okrug. It is mostly spoken by Koryaks. Its close relative, the Chukchi language, is spoken by about three times that number. The language together with Chukchi, Kerek, Alutor and Itelmen forms the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family. Its native name in Koryak is нымылан nymylan, but variants of the Russian "Koryak" name are most commonly used in English and other languages.
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskimo–Aleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskimo–Aleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait. In 2011, Fortescue removed Chukotko-Kamchatkan from the proposal.
Kereks are an ethnic group of people in Russia. According to the 2010 census, there were only 4 people registered as ethnic Kereks in Russia. According to the 2002 census, there were 8 people registered as Kereks. According to the 1897 census, there were 102 Kereks. During the twentieth century, Kereks were almost completely assimilated into the Chukchi people.
Itelmen or Western Itelmen, formerly known as Western Kamchadal, is a language of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family spoken on the western coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Fewer than a hundred native speakers, mostly elderly, in a few settlements in the southwest of Koryak Autonomous Okrug, remained in 1993. The 2002 Census counted 3,180 ethnic Itelmens, virtually all of whom are now monolingual in Russian. However, there are attempts to revive the language, and it is being taught in a number of schools in the region.
Kerek is an extinct language of Russia of the northern branch of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages. On historical linguistic grounds it is most closely related to Koryak. The next closest relative is Chukchi.
The Alyutors are an ethnic group who lived on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East. Today most of them live in Koryak Okrug of Kamchatka Krai.
Kamchatkan (Kamchatic) is a former dialect cluster spoken on the Kamchatka Peninsula. It now consists of a single language, Western Itelmen. It had 100 or fewer speakers in 1991, mostly of the older generation. The Russian census of 2010 still reported 80 speakers.
Siberia, including the Russian Far East, is the Asiatic part of Russia. As a result of the Russian conquest of Siberia and of the subsequent population movements during the Soviet era (1917-1991), the demographics of Siberia today is dominated by speakers of Russian, including the Russian subethnic group Siberians (Sibiryaks). However there remains a slowly increasing number of indigenous groups, between them, accounting for about 10% of the total Siberian population, some of which are closely genetically related to indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Michael David Fortescue 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 Edinburgh in 1978.
En with hook is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Its form is derived from the Cyrillic letter En (Н н) by adding a hook to the right leg.
Circumpolar peoples and Arctic peoples are umbrella terms for the various Indigenous peoples of the Arctic.
Tolkusha is a traditional food of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan peoples in the Russian Far East, especially Kamchatka. It is made of dried fish meat or fish roe mixed with fat and berries extended with edible plant bulbs or stems, ground and pounded together for a long time to yield a white paste.
The Chukotko-Kamchatkan–Amuric languages form a hypothetical language family including Nivkh and Chukotko-Kamchatkan. A relationship between Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Nivkh was proposed by Michael Fortescue. He theorized that their common ancestor might have been spoken around 4000 years ago. However Glottolog says that the evidence is insufficient to conclude a genealogical relationship between Nivkh and Chukotko-Kamchatkan.
This article discusses the phonology of the Chukchi language. The Chukchi language, also known as Chukot or Luorawetlan, is a language spoken by around 5 thousand people in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The endonym of the Chukchi language is Ԓыгъоравэтԓьэн йиԓыйиԓ , pronounced as [ɬəɣˀorawetɬˀɛn jiɬəjiɬ]. Chukchi is in the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family, and thus is closely related to Koryak, Kerek, Alyutor, and more distantly related to Itelmen, Southern Kamchadal, and Eastern Kamchadal.
