Language Families
Eskimo-Aleut
Also Known As Eskaleutian
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A family of roughly 100,000 speakers spanning Alaska, northern Canada (the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut), Greenland and the Chukotka Peninsula of far eastern Russia. It divides into an Eskimoan branch, containing the Inuit and Yupik languages, and a separate Aleut branch now reduced to a handful of elderly speakers. Proto-Eskimo-Aleut has been reconstructed, and the Alaska Native Language Center estimates the branches split at least 4,000 years ago. No wider genetic relationship, including proposals linking it to Uralic or to Yukaghir under a broader Uralo-Siberian or Eurasiatic hypothesis, has been demonstrated by the comparative method.
Facts
RegionAlaska, Arctic Canada (Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut), Greenland and the Chukotka Peninsula of far eastern Russia. 1 Speaker CountApproximately 100,000 across all member languages, the large majority Inuit; Aleut itself is down to a few dozen fluent speakers. Proto-Language StatusProto-Eskimo-Aleut is reconstructed; the Eskimoan and Aleut branches are estimated to have split at least 4,000 years ago. 1 No wider relationship to any other language family, including the proposed Eskimo-Uralic and Uralo-Siberian hypotheses, has been proven. Cross-Tradition Connections
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