Paleosiberian
| 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:
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 Eskimo–Aleut family, 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.
Ket, or more precisely Yeniseian as a whole, has been linked in a generally well-received proposal to the Na-Dené languages of North America. Dené–Yeniseian has been called "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative-historical linguistics". In the past, attempts have been made to relate it to Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, and Burushaski.
...
Wikipedia