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(Palaeo-)Siberian languages, anyone?

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9 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
mizunooto
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 4698 days ago

42 posts - 47 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay

 
 Message 1 of 9
12 May 2012 at 10:59pm | IP Logged 
I have been looking for a while but can't see anything on Siberian languages here. Is anyone/has anyone been/will anyone be learning one or some of these? They seem to be grouped like this:
     
Chukotko-Kamchatkan
Yukaghir
Nivkh
Yeniseian (?Dené–Yeniseian)
also sometimes including:
Eskimo–Aleut
Ainu

(from Wikipedia Palaeosiberian Languages page)

I don't have any knowledge of these at all, but I would be extremely interested in finding out more. Anyone else?

1 person has voted this message useful



Vihelik
Pentaglot
Newbie
Estonia
Joined 4598 days ago

17 posts - 56 votes 
Speaks: Estonian*, Mandarin, English, Russian, Korean
Studies: Tibetan, Spanish, French

 
 Message 2 of 9
12 May 2012 at 11:24pm | IP Logged 
I have dabbled with Yukaghir and looked at Chukchi and Koryak. There aren't any instructional materials available, except for a small number alphabet books and simple readers for native speakers at elementary school level. The best Chukchi and Koryak grammars were published in the sixties in Russian; however, there is a good descriptive Yukaghir grammar by Maslova that was published in 2003 in English. Unfortunately, none of these grammars are pedagogical; thus, they are unsuitable for learning conversation. There is also a Chukchi textbook that was published a couple of years ago in France, but I haven't seen it.

Good luck with Nivkh, Ket (Yeniseian), and other smaller Siberian languages, since anything worth a look is again descriptive and unsuitable for pedagogy.

Your best bet is to concentrate on Eskimoan languages or Aleut; in recent years there has been a trickle of instructional materials coming out, although some of them are of dubious quality.
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sbrn2005
Newbie
Korea, South
Joined 4770 days ago

14 posts - 25 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean

 
 Message 3 of 9
02 July 2012 at 12:56am | IP Logged 
Here are some links to Alaskan language resources, if you're interested:
http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/
http://www.alutiiqlanguage.org/html/background/alutiiq-progr ams.php
http://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_ale_morsyn-2
I myself would be interested in studying Alutiiq or Aleut for language revitalization purposes and because I build traditional kayaks. Good luck!
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Merv
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5274 days ago

414 posts - 749 votes 
Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian*
Studies: Spanish, French

 
 Message 4 of 9
02 July 2012 at 1:14am | IP Logged 
mizunooto wrote:
I have been looking for a while but can't see anything on Siberian languages here. Is
anyone/has anyone been/will anyone be learning one or some of these? They seem to be grouped like this:
     
Chukotko-Kamchatkan
Yukaghir
Nivkh
Yeniseian (?Dené–Yeniseian)
also sometimes including:
Eskimo–Aleut
Ainu

(from Wikipedia Palaeosiberian Languages
page)

I don't have any knowledge of these at all, but I would be extremely interested in finding out more. Anyone else?


No offense, but I just see no point in learning these unless you are a professional linguist or have a personal
connection to these people (family, live among them). They are so arcane (and on the way out), likely difficult,
lacking non-native and non-oral resources, lacking a well-established literature, and generally not needed for
communication (English, Russian, and Japanese will do just fine), that it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

That said, there's no doubt that for a number of these it will be very hard to find English language resources. For
Ainu, your best bet are Japanese resources, and for most of the rest it would be Russian resources.
2 persons have voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 5131 days ago

1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 5 of 9
02 July 2012 at 1:35am | IP Logged 
Merv wrote:
... it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

Worth is very subjective.

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm continually surprised to see this type of discouragement
on the forum. The original poster doesn't go into detail as to why he's interested in
the language, so I don't see why anyone should be so quick to discourage.

R.
==

Edited by hrhenry on 02 July 2012 at 1:41am

7 persons have voted this message useful



KimG
Diglot
Groupie
Norway
Joined 4978 days ago

88 posts - 104 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Portuguese, Swahili

 
 Message 6 of 9
02 July 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged 
Well, there should be some resources about Ainu in Japanese, tho, since Mizuno seem to have studied it, might be interesting, since they live in same region as the Japanese. Tho it's only about 10-15 native speakers. :/
1 person has voted this message useful



sbrn2005
Newbie
Korea, South
Joined 4770 days ago

14 posts - 25 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean

 
 Message 7 of 9
03 July 2012 at 4:29pm | IP Logged 
For Ainu you could try the museum in Nibutani, Hokkaido. They used to have a children's daycare that was supposed to be taught in Ainu, I'm not sure what's become of it though.

1 person has voted this message useful



hribecek
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5350 days ago

1243 posts - 1458 votes 
Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish
Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian

 
 Message 8 of 9
03 July 2012 at 4:32pm | IP Logged 
Merv wrote:

No offense, but I just see no point in learning these

I think you're in the minority here on this forum. Most of us would understand exactly why someone would be interested in these languages without any of the reasons you gave.



1 person has voted this message useful



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