Sirenik Eskimos

Sirenik or Sireniki Eskimos are former speakers of a very peculiar Eskimo language in Siberia, before they underwent a language shift rendering it extinct. The peculiarities of this language among Eskimo languages amount to the extent that it is proposed by some to classify it as a standalone third branch of Eskimo languages (alongside Inuit and Yupik). The total language death of this peculiar remnant means that now the cultural identity of Sirenik Eskimos is maintained through other aspects: slight dialectical difference in the adopted Siberian Yupik language; sense of place, including appreciation of the antiquity of their settlement Sirenik.

At the beginning of the 20th century, speakers of the Sirenik Eskimo language inhabited the settlements of Sirenik, Imtuk, and some small villages stretching to the west from Sirenik along south-eastern coasts of the Chukchi Peninsula. As early as in 1895, Imtuk was already a settlement with mixed population of Sirenik Eskimos and Ungazigmit (the latter belonging to Siberian Yupik).

The Eskimo population of settlement of Сиреники (Sireniki, plural of Sirenik) formerly spoke an Eskimo language with several peculiarities not only among Eskimo languages, but even compared to Aleut. For example, dual number is not known in Sirenik Eskimo, while most Eskimo–Aleut languages have dual, including the neighboring Siberian Yupik relatives. The peculiarities amounted to mutual unintelligibility with Siberian Yupik and Sirenik Eskimo's nearest language relatives. The language is now extinct.

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