| Also Known As: Nivkhi,Nivkh
Description:
Nivkh or Gilyak (self-designation: Нивхгу диф; Japanese: ニヴフ語/ギリヤーク語, nivufu-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 correspondences 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 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..... full article at Wikipedia |
