page_title: Eskimo
section_title: Languages
hierarchical_section_title: Eskimo / Languages
caption_attribution_description: English: The traditional welcome sign at Barrow, Alaska. Notice the two whale jawbones. The body of the sign is written in Iñupiaq (Eskimo).
context_page_description: Eskimo or Eskimos are the Indigenous circumpolar peoples who have traditionally inhabited the northern circumpolar region from eastern Siberia to Alaska, Northern Canada, Nunavik and Greenland.
  The two main peoples known as "Eskimo" are the Inuit and the Yupik. A third northern group, the Aleut, is closely related to both. They share a relatively recent common ancestor and a language group.
  The non-Inuit sub-branch of the Eskimo branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family consists of four distinct Yupik languages, two used in the Russian Far East and St. Lawrence Island, and two used in western Alaska, southwestern Alaska, and the western part of Southcentral Alaska. The extinct language of the Sirenik people is sometimes argued to be related to these.
  According to recent genomic research, the Chukchi people, from eastern Siberia, are the closest living relatives of the Siberian Yupik and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas generally.
  There are more than 183,000 people of Eskimo descent alive today, of which 135,000 or more live in or near the traditional circumpolar regions. The NGO known as the Inuit Circumpolar Council claims to represent 180,000 people.
context_section_description: The Eskimo–Aleut family of languages includes two cognate branches: the Aleut (Unangan) branch and the Eskimo branch.
  The number of cases varies, with Aleut languages having a greatly reduced case system compared to those of the Eskimo subfamily. Eskimo–Aleut languages possess voiceless plosives at the bilabial, coronal, velar and uvular positions in all languages except Aleut, which has lost the bilabial stops but retained the nasal. In the Eskimo subfamily a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is also present.
  The Eskimo sub-family consists of the Inuit language and Yupik language sub-groups. The Sirenikski language, which is virtually extinct, is sometimes regarded as a third branch of the Eskimo language family. Other sources regard it as a group belonging to the Yupik branch.
  Inuit languages comprise a dialect continuum, or dialect chain, that stretches from Unalakleet and Norton Sound in Alaska, across northern Alaska and Canada, and east to Greenland. Changes from western (Iñupiaq) to eastern dialects are marked by the dropping of vestigial Yupik-related features, increasing consonant assimilation (e.g., kumlu, meaning "thumb", changes to kuvlu, changes to kublu, changes to kulluk, changes to kulluq), and increased consonant lengthening, and lexical change. Thus, speakers of two adjacent Inuit dialects would usually be able to understand one another, but speakers from dialects distant from each other on the dialect continuum would have difficulty understanding one another. Seward Peninsula dialects in western Alaska, where much of the Iñupiat culture has been in place for perhaps less than 500 years, are greatly affected by phonological influence from the Yupik languages. Eastern Greenlandic, at the opposite end of the Inuit range, has had significant word replacement due to a unique form of ritual name avoidance.
  The four Yupik languages, by contrast, including Alutiiq (Sugpiaq), Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Naukan (Naukanski), and Siberian Yupik, are distinct languages with phonological, morphological, and lexical differences. They demonstrate limited mutual intelligibility. Additionally, both Alutiiq and Central Yup'ik have considerable dialect diversity. The northernmost Yupik languages – Siberian Yupik and Naukan Yupik – are linguistically only slightly closer to Inuit than is Alutiiq, which is the southernmost of the Yupik languages. Although the grammatical structures of Yupik and Inuit languages are similar, they have pronounced differences phonologically. Differences of vocabulary between Inuit and any one of the Yupik languages are greater than between any two Yupik languages. Even the dialectal differences within Alutiiq and Central Alaskan Yup'ik sometimes are relatively great for locations that are relatively close geographically.
  Despite the relatively small population of Naukan speakers, documentation of the language dates back to 1732. While Naukan is only spoken in Siberia, the language acts as an intermediate between two Alaskan languages: Siberian Yupik Eskimo and Central Yup'ik Eskimo.
  The Sirenikski language is sometimes regarded as a third branch of the Eskimo language family, but other sources regard it as a group belonging to the Yupik branch.
  An overview of the Eskimo–Aleut languages family is given below:
  Aleut
  Aleut language
  Western-Central dialects: Atkan, Attuan, Unangan, Bering (60–80 speakers)
  Eastern dialect: Unalaskan, Pribilof (400 speakers)
  Eskimo (Yup'ik, Yuit, and Inuit)
  Yupik
  Central Alaskan Yup'ik (10,000 speakers)
  Alutiiq or Pacific Gulf Yup'ik (400 speakers)
  Central Siberian Yupik or Yuit (Chaplinon and St Lawrence Island, 1,400 speakers)
  Naukan (700 speakers)
  Inuit or Inupik (75,000 speakers)
  Iñupiaq (northern Alaska, 3,500 speakers)
  Inuvialuktun (western Canada; together with Siglitun, Natsilingmiutut, Inuinnaqtun and Uummarmiutun 765 speakers)
  Inuktitut (eastern Canada; together with Inuktun and Inuinnaqtun, 30,000 speakers)
  Kalaallisut (Greenlandic (Greenland, 47,000 speakers)
  Inuktun (Avanersuarmiutut, Thule dialect or Polar Eskimo, approximately 1,000 speakers)
  Tunumiit o
caption: English ("Welcome to Barrow") and Iñupiaq (Paġlagivsigiñ Utqiaġvigmun), Utqiagvik, Alaska, framed by whale jawbones
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