Nivkh Language

Information about Nivkh Language

Nivkh (нивхгу /mer nivx tif/ /ɳiɣvn duf/ (S.E. Sakhalin dialect))
Spoken in:	Russia, Japan^[1]
Region:	Sakhalin Island, and along the Amur River
Total speakers:	1,089 (1989 census)
Ranking:
Genetic classification:	Language isolate, but included in the group of Paleosiberian languages for classification convenience
Official status
Official language of:
Regulated by:
Language codes
ISO 639-1
ISO 639-2	mis
SIL
See also: Language – List of languages

Nivkh or Gilyak (ethnonym: нивхгу, Japanese: ニヴフ語/ギリヤーク語 nivuhu-go/giriyāku-go)) is a language spoken in Outer 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 Manchu appellation. Its speakers are known as the Nivkhs.

Nivkh is a language isolate; i.e., it does not appear to be related to any other language. For classification convenience, it is included in the group of Paleosiberian languages. Many words in the Nivkh language bear a certain resemblance to words of similar meaning in other Paleosiberian languages, Ainu, Korean, or Altaic languages, but no regular sound changes have been discovered to systematically account for the vocabularies of these various languages, so any lexical similarities are considered to be due to chance or to borrowing. Recently, the Nivkh language was included in the controversial Eurasiatic languages hypothesis by Joseph Greenberg.

The lexical and phonological differences between the dialect spoken by the Nivkhs of the Amur River basin and the dialect spoken by the Nivkhs of Sakhalin Island are so great that some linguists have classified them as two distinct languages belonging to a small Nivkh language family. Other linguists have emphasized the high degree of variability of usage among all Nivkhs; even within the Amur or Sakhalin dialect zone, there is said to be great diversity depending on the village, clan, or even individual speaker.

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 has dropped from 100% to 23.3% in the same period, so that there are now just over 1,000 first-language speakers left.

Sounds

Consonants

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Palato- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Stop	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ			kʰ	qʰ
	unaspirated	p		t		c	k	q
	affricate			tʃʰ
Fricative	voiceless		f	s			x	χ	h
Fricative	voiced		z			ɣ	ʁ
Trill	voiced		r
Trill	voiceless		r̥
Approximant		ʋ	l		j	w

Vowels

The vowel system of Nivkh is unusual, being described by Ian Maddieson as "defective." It is actually a rotated system in which a gap in the mid front region of the vowel space is compensated for by moving vowels around. The centralised /ɤ/ has been described by Maddieson (1984) as complementing a gap caused by the lack of an ordinary mid front vowel.

The mid front vowel expected in a five-vowel system may have in the past developed into a close-to-mid front unrounded diphthong, represented in Maddieson's description of the language as /ɪe/.

	Front	back
	Front	round	unrounded
Close	ɪ	u
Mid	ɪe	o	ɤ
Open	Ã¦

References

1. ^ 『ギリヤークの昔話』中村チヨ (1992) 北海道出版企画センター

Bibliography

Gruzdeva, Ekaterina. 1998. Nivkh, Lincom Europa, Munich, ISBN 3895860395
Maddieson, Ian. 1984. Patterns of sounds, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521265363

External links

The Nivkhs from The Red Book
Sound Materials of the Nivkh Language The World's Largest Sound Archive of the Nivkh Language on the Web
Nivkh alphabet and language at Omniglot

Anthem
Hymn of the Russian Federation

Capital
(and largest city) Moscow

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Sakhalin
Native name: Сахали?<nowiki />

Geography <nowiki/>
Location Russian Far East, Pacific Ocean
Coordinates 45Â°50' 54Â°24' N<nowiki /> <nowiki />
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Origin The mountains of Northeastern China
Mouth The Pacific Ocean, through the Tartar Strait
Basin countries China, Russia, Mongolia
Length 4,444 km (2,761 mi)

Basin area 1,855,000 kmÂ² (716,200 miÂ²)

The Amur River or
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This is a list of languages, ordered by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use. Languages are listed for secondary locations only when spoken by more than 1% of the population.
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A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language. As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics.
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A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic") relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language.
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Paleosiberian (Palaeosiberian, Paleo-Siberian) languages or Paleoasian languages (Palaeo-Asiatic) (from Greek palaios, "ancient") is a term of convenience used in linguistics to classify a disparate group of languages spoken in remote regions of Siberia.
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This is a list of bodies that regulate standard languages.

Afrikaans Die Taalkommissie, South Africa
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ISO 639 consists of different parts, of which two parts have been approved and a third part that is in the final approval (FDIS) stage. The other parts are works in progress.
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Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in
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See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.

A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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lists of languages:

List of languages by name
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Ethnologue list of most spoken languages

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This article contains Japanese text.
Without proper ,
you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of kanji or kana.

Japanese
日本語
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Outer Manchuria (Chinese: 外滿洲), known in China as Outer Northeast [China] (Chinese: 外東北), and Priamurye (Cyrillic: Приаму́рье) in Russia, is the territory ceded by
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Amgun River (Russian: Амгу́нь) is a river in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, left tributary of the Amur River. The length of the river is 723 km. The area of its basin is 55,500 kmÂ².
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The Nivkhs (also Nivkh or Gilyak; ethnonym: Nivxi; language, нивхгу - Nivxgu) are an indigenous people inhabiting the region of the Amur River estuary and nearby Sakhalin Island. They number 5,287 (2002 Russian Federation census).
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Ainu language (Ainu: アイヌイタク , aynu itak; Japanese: アイヌ語 ainu-go
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Korean}}}
Writing system: Exclusive use of Hangul (N. & S. Korea), mix of Hangul and Hanja (S. Korea), or Cyrillic alphabet (lesser used in Goryeomal)
Official status
Official language of: North Korea
South Korea
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Altaic is a proposed language family that includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia.^[1]
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Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by the late Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe, Asia, and North America.

The branches of Eurasiatic

As laid out by Greenberg (2000:279-81), the branches of Eurasiatic are:

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Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist and Africanist anthropologist, known for his work in both language classification and typology.
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In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
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In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth. The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning

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