Yupik
Yupik refers to several groups of Eskimo and their languages (English also Western Eskimo ), which are spoken by around 16,000 people on the Russian Chukchi Peninsula , southwest Alaska and some islands.
The Central Alaskan Yup'ik live in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta , on the Kuskokwim River and on the coast of Bristol Bay , the Pacific Yupik ( Alutiiq or Sugpiaq ) on the Alaska Peninsula and on the coast and on islands in south-central Alaska . The Siberian Yupik and Naukan live in eastern Russia and on the Saint Lawrence Island, which belongs to Alaska .
As a rule, Yupik is spoken in small settlements or among the nomads , while Russian is the lingua franca in the large settlements. In Siberia, the cultivation of the language in certain primary schools is remarkable. On the American side, the English language dominates the settlements. In many communities, half of the population is white and a quarter each is Indians and Eskimos.
Yupik was first recorded in writing during the missionary work of these groups, in Siberia by Innokenti Weniaminow , in Alaska by Reverend John Henry Kilbuck in the course of the 19th century. Around 1900, an illiterate the Yupik developed with a certain access to the letters of the English language, the occasional Yupik font called Alaska font , a now uncommon syllabary.
See also
literature
- Lyle Campbell : American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; ISBN 0-19-509427-1
- Marianne Mithun: The languages of Native North America ; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X
- Willem J. de Reuse: Siberian Yupik Eskimo: The language and its contacts with Chukchi. Studies in indigenous languages of the Americas ; Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994; ISBN 0-87480-397-7
- Jeela Palluq: Inuktitut. The Inuktitut Language. Inuktitut: In the Way of the Inuit ; in: Project Naming
Web links
- The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire: The Asiatic (Siberian) Eskimos (English)
- Orthodox texts from Alaska (Yup'ik)
- Sheila Wallace: My little corner of the web ... (Ayaprun Elitnaurvik - Yupik Immersion School)