The Tungusic languages 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. The term "Tungusic" is from an exonym for the Evenk people (Ewenki) used by the Yakuts ("tongus").
The Nanai people are a Tungusic people of East Asia who have traditionally lived along Heilongjiang (Amur), Songhuajiang (Sunggari) and Wusuli River on the Middle Amur Basin. The ancestors of the Nanai were the Wild Jurchens of northernmost Manchuria.
Permyak language is one of two Permic varieties in the Uralic language family that form a pluricentric language, the other being Komi-Zyryan.
Evenkiay-VEN-kee (Ewenkī), formerly known as Tungus or Solon, is the largest member of the northern group of Tungusic languages, a group which also includes Even, Negidal, and the more closely related Oroqen language. The name is sometimes wrongly given as "Evenks". It is spoken by Evenks or Ewenkī(s) in Russia and China.
Kalmyk Oirat, commonly known as the Kalmyk language, is a variety of the Oirat language, natively spoken by the Kalmyk people of Kalmykia, a federal subject of Russia. In Russia, it is the standard form of the Oirat language, which belongs to the Mongolic language family. The Kalmyk people of the Northwest Caspian Sea of Russia claim descent from the Oirats from Eurasia, who have also historically settled in Mongolia and Northwest China. According to UNESCO, the language is "Definitely endangered". According to the Russian census of 2010, there are 80,500 speakers of an ethnic population consisting of 183,000 people.
Orochs, Orochons, or Orochis are a people of Russia that speak the Oroch (Orochon) language of the Southern group of Tungusic languages. According to the 2002 census there were 686 Orochs in Russia. According to the 2010 census there were 596 Orochs in Russia.
Negidals are an Indigenous ethnic group in the Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, who live along the Amgun River and Amur River.
Udege are a native people of the Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai regions in Russia. They live along the tributaries of the Ussuri, Amur, Khungari, and Anyuy Rivers. The Udege speak the Udege language, which belongs to the Tungusic language family. Their religious beliefs include animism, animal worship, and shamanism. The Udege are mainly engaged in hunting, fishing, and ginseng harvesting. According to the 2002 census, there were 1,657 Udege in Russia, a slight increase from 1,500 in 1970. This was down to 1,496 Udege in Russia in the 2010 census. They are one of the closest ethnic groups to the Manchu and Nanai, and are possibly of Xi Yeren Jurchen origin.
The Even languageə-VEN, also known as Lamut, Ewen, Eben, Orich, Ilqan, is a Tungusic language spoken by the Evens in Siberia. It is spoken by widely scattered communities of reindeer herders from Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east to the Lena river in the west and from the Arctic coast in the north to the Aldan river in the south. Even is an endangered language with only some 5,700 speakers. These speakers are specifically from the Magadan region, the Chukot region and the Koryak region. The dialects are Arman, Indigirka, Kamchatka, Kolyma-Omolon, Okhotsk, Ola, Tompon, Upper Kolyma, Sakkyryr and Lamunkhin.
Tungusic peoples are an ethnolinguistic group formed by the speakers of Tungusic languages. They are native to Siberia, China, and Mongolia.
The Nanai language is spoken by the Nanai people in Siberia, and to a much smaller extent in China's Heilongjiang province, where it is known as Hezhe. The language has about 1,400 speakers out of 17,000 ethnic Nanai, but most are also fluent in Russian or Chinese, and mostly use one of those languages for communication.
The Udege language is the language of the Udege people. It is a member of the Tungusic family. It is a moribund language, and classified as critically endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger.
The Taz are a Tungusic and Chinese people who primarily live in Russia. They formed in the 1890s, from intermarriages between Udege, Nanai and Chinese. The Taz speak Russian and Northeast Mandarin, with loanwords from Udege and Nanai.
Taz is a dialect of Northeastern Mandarin formerly spoken by the Taz people of the Russian Far East. There are a few loanwords from Tungusic languages, but no obvious Tungusic effect on the grammar.
Negidal is a language of the Tungusic family spoken in the Russian Far East, mostly in Khabarovskij Kraj, along the lower reaches of the Amur River. Negidal belongs to the Northern branch of Tungusic, together with Evenki and Even. It is particularly close to Evenki, to the extent that it is occasionally referred to as a dialect of Evenki.
Uilta is a Tungusic language spoken in the Poronaysky and Nogliksky Administrative Divisions of Sakhalin Oblast, in the Russian Federation, by the Uilta people. The northern Uilta who live along the river of Tym’ and around the village of Val have reindeer herding as one of their traditional occupations. The southern Uilta live along the Poronay near the city of Poronaysk. The two dialects come from the northern and eastern groups, however, they have very few differences.
The Komi-Yazva language is spoken mostly in Krasnovishersky District of Perm Krai in Russia, in the basin of the Yazva (Yodz) River. It is a Permic language closely related to Komi-Zyrian and Permyak. It has no official status.
Albina Khakimovna Girfanova, was a Russian linguist and anthropologist. She worked at the Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, and later at Saint Petersburg State University, where she attained the rank of Docent. Girfanova is most known for her work on Udege and Oroch languages, as well as on a number of other Tungusic languages and Balkan languages. She is the author of the most significant vocabulary of Udege, published in Russia, as well as other important studies and reference sources of Udege, Oroch and Balkan languages.
The Udegheic languages form a small subgroup of Tungusic languages of Far East Russia.
Udege alphabets are the alphabets used to write the Udege language. During its existence, it functioned on different graphic bases and was repeatedly reformed. Currently, the Udege script functions on two versions of the Cyrillic alphabet for two emerging literary languages, but does not have a generally accepted norm. There are 2 stages in the history of Udege writing:
