Eskimo-Aleut languages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. Also called Eskaleut (Eskaleutian, Eskaleutic), Eskimoan or Macro-Eskimo, it consists of the Eskimo languages (known as Inuit in the north of Alaska, Canada and Greenland, and as Yupik/Yup'ik in western and southwestern Alaska and in Siberia), and the single Aleut language of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands.
Eskimo is an exonym of Algonquian origin and is a deprecated name, but is retained to speak of the Yuit-Yup'ik-Inuit as a whole. Within Canada, Inuit is preferred. In Alaska, Yup'ik, Inupiaq, or Inuit is preferred, depending on who is being referred to.
Traditionally, the Eskimo languages family was divided into Inuit and Yup'ik (or Yup'ik-Yuit). However, recent research suggests that Yup'ik by itself is not a valid node, or, equivalently, that the Inuit dialect continuum is but one of several languages of the Yup'ik group. However, although it may be technically correct to replace the term Eskimo with Yup'ik in this classification, this would not be acceptable to most Inuit. Also, the Alaskan-Siberian dichotomy appears to have been geographical rather than linguistic.
Eskimo-Aleut
- Aleut
- Aleut language
- Western-Central dialects: Atkan, Attuan, Unangan, Bering (60-80 speakers)
- Eastern dialect: Unalaskan, Pribilof (400 speakers)
- Aleut language
- Eskimo (Yup'ik, Yuit, and Inuit)
- Central Alaskan Yup'ik (10,000 speakers)
- Alutiiq or Pacific Gulf Yup'ik (400 speakers)
- Central Siberian Yupik or Yuit (Chaplinon and St Lawrence Island, 1400 speakers)
- Naukan (70 speakers)
- Inuit or Inupik (75,000 speakers)
- Iñupiaq (northern Alaska, 3,500 speakers)
- Inuvialuktun or Inuktun (western Canada; 765 speakers)
- Inuktitut (eastern Canada; together with Inuktun and Inuinnaqtun, 30,000 speakers)
- Kalaallisut (Greenland, 47,000 speakers)
- Sirenik (extinct)
According to Joseph Greenberg's highly controversial classification of the languages of Native North America, Eskimo-Aleut is one of the three main groups of Native languages spoken in the Americas, and represents a distinct wave of migration from Asia to the Americas. The other two are Na-Dené (which includes Athabaskan and a small number of related tongues) and Amerind (Greenberg's most controversial classification, which includes every language native to the Americas that is not Eskimo-Aleut or Na-Dené).
