Eurasiatic languages: Encyclopedia II - Eurasiatic languages - The branches of Eurasiatic

Eurasiatic languages - The branches of Eurasiatic

As laid out by Greenberg (2000:279-81), the branches of Eurasiatic are:

• Etruscan
• Indo-European
• Uralic-Yukaghir
• Altaic
• Korean-Japanese-Ainu
• Gilyak
• Chukotian
• Eskimo-Aleut

Etruscan was spoken in Tuscany and nearby areas of Italy up to the first century A.D. It may have been brought to Italy by emigrants from Anatolia.

Indo-European is the hypothetical common ancestor of most of the languages of Europe and many of those of Asia.

Uralic-Yukaghir associates Yukaghir, a language spoken in Siberia that has several dialects, with the large family of Uralic languages, which are divided into Samoyed and Finno-Ugric. The best-known Ugric language is Hungarian. Some of the well-known Finnic languages are Finnish, Estonian, and Saami (Lapp).

Altaic, in Greenberg's view, includes Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic, but not Korean, Ainu, or Japanese.

Korean-Japanese-Ainu, as construed by Greenberg, forms a single group, and also includes Ryukyuan, which is closely related to Japanese.

Gilyak, also called Nivkh, is spoken in the northern half of the island of Sakhalin and on the Asian mainland opposite.

Chukotian comprises a group of languages spoken in Chukotka, at the extreme northeast of the Russian Federation, and to its south on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Eskimo-Aleut is a group of languages spoken from the Aleutian Islands across northern Canada to Greenland.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The branches of Eurasiatic", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki