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The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus, Tungus) are spoken in Eastern Siberia
Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
 and Manchuria
Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria either falls entirely within People's Republic of China, or is divided between China and Russia....
. Although it is a very debated subject, many linguists consider them to be part of the Altaic
Altaic languages

Altaic is a disputed language family that is generally held by its proponents to include the Turkic languages, Mongolic languages, Tungusic languages, Korean language, and Japonic languages language families ....
 language phylum, which, if it actually exists as a genetic entity, also includes the Turkic
Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
 and Mongolic
Mongolic languages

The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in Central Asia. Some linguists propose the grouping of Mongolic with Turkic languages and Tungusic languages as Altaic languages, but this hypothesis is not universally agreed upon....
 language families. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain.

uists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics.






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The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus, Tungus) are spoken in Eastern Siberia
Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
 and Manchuria
Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria either falls entirely within People's Republic of China, or is divided between China and Russia....
. Although it is a very debated subject, many linguists consider them to be part of the Altaic
Altaic languages

Altaic is a disputed language family that is generally held by its proponents to include the Turkic languages, Mongolic languages, Tungusic languages, Korean language, and Japonic languages language families ....
 language phylum, which, if it actually exists as a genetic entity, also includes the Turkic
Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
 and Mongolic
Mongolic languages

The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in Central Asia. Some linguists propose the grouping of Mongolic with Turkic languages and Tungusic languages as Altaic languages, but this hypothesis is not universally agreed upon....
 language families. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain.

Classification

Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics. One classification which seems favoured over other alternatives is that the Tungusic languages can be divided into a northern branch and a southern branch, with the southern branch further subdivided into southeastern and southwestern groups.

Northern Tungusic
  • Evenki (obsolete: Tungus), spoken by Ewenkis in central Siberia
    Siberia

    Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
     and northeastern China
    China

    China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
     and
  • Even
    Even language

    The Even language is a Tungusic languages language spoken by the Evens in Siberia. It is widely scattered over the entire Okhotsk Arctic coast....
     (Lamut) of eastern Siberia
    Siberia

    Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
Following languages can be considered dialects or related languages of Evenki
  • Oroqen
    Oroqen language

    Oroqen is a Tungusic languages language spoken in the People's Republic of China. Dialects are Gankui and Heilongjiang. Gankui is the standard dialect. ...
  • Negidal
    Negidal language

    Negidal is a language of the Tungusic languages spoken in the Russian Far East along the lower reaches of the Amur River. It is nearing extinction....
  • Solon
  • Manegir


Southern Tungusic
  • Southeast Tungusic
    • Nanai
      Nanai language

      The Nanai language is spoken by the Nanai people in Siberia, and to a much smaller extent in China's Heilongjiang province, where it is known as Hezhe....
       (Gold, Goldi, Hezhen)
    • Akani
    • Birar
    • Kile
    • Samagir
    • Orok
    • Ulch
      Ulch language

      The Ulch language, or Olcha, is a language spoken by the Ulchs people in Siberia. The language has about 500 to 1,000 speakers.Its ISO 639-3 code is ulc....
    • Oroch
      Oroch

      Orochs or Orochons are a small people of Russia that speak the Oroch dialect of the Southern group of Tungusic languages. According to the 2002 census, there were 686 Orochs in Russia....
    • Udege
      Udege language

      The Udege language is a language of the Tungusic languages. It contains a variety of loanwords from the closely-related Nanai language which have supplanted some older Udege vocabulary, such as...


  • Southwest Tungusic (or the Jurchen-Manchu group)
    • Manchu
      Manchu language

      Manchu is a Tungusic languages language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus....
       of Manchuria
      Manchuria

      Manchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria either falls entirely within People's Republic of China, or is divided between China and Russia....
      , the language of the Manchu
      Manchu

      The Manchu people are a Tungusic peoples who originated in Manchuria . During their rise in the seventeenth century, with the help of Ming rebels , they conquered the Ming Dynasty and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until its abolition in 1911 after the Xinhai Revolution, which established Republic of China in its place....
      s, who founded the Qing Dynasty
      Qing Dynasty

      The Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, followed the Ming Dynasty in History of China, and was the last ruling Chinese Dynasties of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 ....
       of China.
    • Sibe
      Xibe language

      The Xibe language is the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages spoken by members of the Xibe ethnic group in Xinjiang. It is intercomprehensible with the closely-related Manchu language; however, unlike Manchu, Xibe language is reported to have eight vowel distinctions as opposed to the six found in Manchu, differences in morphology,...
       - spoken in Xinjiang
      Xinjiang

      Xinjiang is an autonomous region of China of the People's Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million sq....
       autonomous region by descendants of a Manchurian tribe dispatched by the Qing Dynasty to Xinjiang as a military garrison.
    • Jurchen
      Jurchen language

      Jurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the creators of the Jin Dynasty in the northeastern China of the 12th-13th centuries....
       - an extinct language of the Jin Dynasty of China.
Jurchen-Manchu (Jurchen and Manchu are simply different stages of the same language; in fact, the ethnonym "Manchu" did not come about until 1636 when Emperor Hong Taiji decreed that the term would replace "Jurchen") is the only Tungusic language with a literary form (in Jurchen script
Jurchen script

Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language - the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Dynasty in the northeastern China of the 12th-13th centuries....
 and later the Manchu alphabet
Manchu alphabet

The Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language descended from Manchu....
) which dates back to at least the mid- to late-1100s; as such it is a very important language for the reconstruction of Proto-Tungusic.

The earliest and one of the most important extant texts in Jurchen is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (Da Jin deshengtuo songbei), which was erected in 1185, during the Dading period (1161-1189). It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele.

Common characteristics

The Tungusic languages are of an agglutinative morphological type, and some of them have complex case
Declension

In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as grammatical number , grammatical case , and grammatical gender....
 systems and elaborate patterns of tense
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
 and aspect
Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
 marking. They also exhibit a complex pattern of vowel harmony
Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
, based on the parameters of vowel roundedness
Roundedness

In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization....
 and vowel tenseness
Tenseness

In phonology, tenseness is a particular vowel quality that is phoneme contrastive in many languages, including English language. It has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants....
.

Relationships with other languages

Tungusic has traditionally been linked with Turkic
Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
 and Mongolic languages
Mongolic languages

The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in Central Asia. Some linguists propose the grouping of Mongolic with Turkic languages and Tungusic languages as Altaic languages, but this hypothesis is not universally agreed upon....
 in the Altaic language family
Altaic languages

Altaic is a disputed language family that is generally held by its proponents to include the Turkic languages, Mongolic languages, Tungusic languages, Korean language, and Japonic languages language families ....
. Others have suggested that the Tungusic languages might be related (perhaps as a paraphyletic outgroup) to the Korean
Korean language

Korean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China....
, Japonic
Japonic languages

Japonic or Japanese-Ryukyuan is a language family composed of Japanese language and Ryukyuan languages. Their common ancestral language is known as Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan. The essential feature of this classification is that the first split in the family resulted in the separation of all dialects of Japane...
, or Ainu
Ainu language

Hokkaido Ainu is an Ainu languages spoken by members of the Ainu people ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.Until the twentieth century, Ainu languages were also spoken throughout the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands....
 languages as well.

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