Paleo-Asiatic
| Paleosiberian | |
|---|---|
| (geographic) | |
| Geographic distribution |
North Asia, East Asia |
| Linguistic classification | Not a single family |
| Subdivisions |
|
| Glottolog | None |
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 linguistic isolates as well as a few small families of languages spoken in parts both of northeastern Siberia and of the Russian Far East. They are not known to have any linguistic 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 (at least in Siberia) and especially Tungusic, have been displaced in their turn by Russian.
The total number of speakers of the Paleo-Siberian languages is approximately 23,000 people.
Four small language families and isolates comprise the Paleo-Siberian languages:
Ainu is sometimes added to this group though it is not, strictly speaking, a language of Siberia. It barely survives in southern Sakhalin where it was the main native language. It was also spoken in the Kuril Islands and on Hokkaidō, where a strong interest in its revival is taking place. Attempts have been made to relate it to many other language families, including Altaic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Nihali, and the putative Indo-Pacific stock.
Together with Japanese and Korean, which are major modern languages, these "poor relations" resist any easy or obvious linguistic classification, either with other groups or with each other. Languages within the Paleo-Siberian group are thought by some to be related to the Na-Dené and Eskimo–Aleut families, which survive in slightly larger numbers in Alaska and northern Canada. This would back the majority consensus that North America's aboriginal peoples migrated from present-day Siberia and other regions of Asia when the two continents were joined during the last ice age.
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