View source for Nivkh languages

{{short description|Paleosiberian language family}}
{{Redirect-distinguish|Gilyak language|Gilaki language{{!}}Gilak language}}
{{Infobox language
| name             = Nivkh
| altname          = Gilyak, Amuric
| nativename       = {{lang|niv|нивх диф}}, {{lang|niv|нивх туғс}}
| pronunciation    = {{IPA|[mer ɲivx dif/tuɣs]}} <small>(Amur dialect)</small>;<br />{{IPA|[ɲiɣvŋ duf]}} <small>(S.E. Sakhalin dialect)</small>
| map              = Nivkh_settlements_2002_map_vector.svg
| mapcaption       = Settlements with Nivkh populations in the [[Russian Census of 2002]]
| region           = [[Sakhalin|Island of Sakhalin]], along the lower [[Amur River]] and around the [[Amur Liman]]. Formerly, also in the [[Shantar Islands]] and parts of [[Amur Oblast]]
| protoname        = [[Wiktionary: Appendix:List of Proto-Nivkh reconstructions|Proto-Nivkh]]
| ethnicity        = 4,652 [[Nivkh people|Nivkh]]
| speakers         = {{sigfig|1,277|2}}
| date             = 2020 census
| ref              = <ref>{{Cite web |title=Росстат — Всероссийская перепись населения 2020 |url=https://rosstat.gov.ru/vpn_popul |access-date=3 January 2023 |website=rosstat.gov.ru |archive-date=24 January 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200124160257/http://rosstat.gov.ru/vpn_popul |url-status=dead }}</ref>
| familycolor      = Paleosiberian
| family           = One of the world's primary [[language family|language families]]
| ancestor         = 
| script           = [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]], [[Latin script|Latin]]
| iso3             = niv
| glotto           = nivk1234
| glottorefname    = Nivkh
| notice           = IPA
| dia1             = Nivkh proper (Amur)
| dia2             = Nighvng{{Indent|1}}{{*}}East Sakhalin{{Indent|1}}{{*}}South Sakhalin
| states           = [[Russian Far East]], more specifically [[Amur Oblast]], [[Khabarovsk Krai]] and [[Sakhalin Oblast]]
}}

'''Nivkh''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|n|iː|f|k}} {{respell|NEEFK}}; occasionally also Nivkhic; self-designation: Нивхгу диф, ''Nivhgu dif'', {{IPA|/ɲivxɡu dif/}}), '''Gilyak''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|ɡ|ɪ|l|j|æ|k}} {{respell|GIL|yak}}),<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bauer |first=Laurie |title=The Linguistics Student's Handbook |date=2007 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |location=Edinburgh |language=en}}</ref> or '''Amuric''', is a small [[language family]], often portrayed as a [[language isolate]], of two or three mutually unintelligible languages<ref>{{harvp|Gruzdeva|1998}}</ref><ref name="Fortescue2016" /> spoken by the [[Nivkh people]] in [[Outer Manchuria]], in the basin of the [[Amgun River|Amgun]] (a tributary of the [[Amur River|Amur]]), along the lower reaches of the [[Amur River|Amur]] itself, and on the northern half of [[Sakhalin]]. "Gilyak" is the Russian rendering of terms derived from the Tungusic "Gileke" and Manchu-Chinese "Gilemi" (Gilimi, Gilyami) for culturally similar peoples of the [[Amur River]] region, and was applied principally to the Nivkh in Western literature.<ref name="Zgusta71">{{Cite book |last=Zgusta |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oToLCgAAQBAJ&q=Shantar+Nivkh&pg=PA71 |title=The Peoples of Northeast Asia Through Time: Precolonial Ethnic and Cultural Processes Along the Coast Between Hokkaido and the Bering Strait |date=2015 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-30043-9 |location=Leiden |page=71}}</ref>

The population of ethnic Nivkhs has been reasonably stable over the past century, with 4,549 Nivkhs counted in 1897 and 4,673 in 1989. However, the number of native speakers of the Nivkh language among these dropped from 100% to 23.3% in the same period, so by the 1989 census there were only 1,079 first-language speakers left.<ref>{{harvp|Arefiev|2014|page=50}}</ref> That may have been an overcount, however, as the 2010 census recorded only 198 native speakers, less than 4% of the ethnic population.<ref>{{harvp|Arefiev|2014|page=97}}</ref>

Proto-Nivkh(ic), the [[proto-language]] ancestral to the modern-day languages, has been reconstructed by [[Michael Fortescue|Fortescue]] (2016).<ref name="Fortescue2016" />

==Languages==
Nivkh is a [[dialect continuum]]. There is a high degree of variability of usage among Nivkhs depending on village, clan, and even the individual speaker. Varieties are traditionally grouped into four geographic clusters. These are the lower-Amur variety, the North Sakhalin variety (spoken on the coasts around the [[Amur Liman]], including the mainland and west Sakhalin), the East Sakhalin variety (including populations around the [[Tym (Sakhalin)|Tym River]]), and the South Sakhalin variety (spoken around the [[Poronay River]]). The lexical and phonological differences across these varieties is great enough that specialists describe them as falling into two or three languages, though for purposes of language revival among a small and already divided population, Nivkh is generally presented as a single language, due to fears of the consequences of further division.

Gruzdeva (1998) notes that speakers of East Sakhalin and the lower Amur cannot understand each other, and divides the varieties into two languages, '''Nivkh proper''' (including the lower Amur, Northern Sakhalin / Straits and Western Sakhalin varieties) and '''Nighvng''' (the East and South Sakhalin varieties). Fortescue (2016)<ref name="Fortescue2016">{{Cite book |last=Fortescue |first=Michael D. |author-link=Michael Fortescue| title=Comparative Nivkh Dictionary |date=2016 |publisher=Lincom Europa |isbn=978-3-86288-687-6 |location=Munich |language=en}}</ref> notes that the Amur, East Sakhalin and South Sakhalin varieties have low intelligibility with each other, and considers each of them to constitute a separate language.

==Classification==
Nivkh is not known to be related to any other language, making it a [[language isolate]]. For convenience, it may be included in the geographical group of [[Paleosiberian languages]]. Many words in the Nivkh languages bear a certain resemblance to words of similar meaning in other [[Paleosiberian languages]], [[Ainu language|Ainu]], [[Korean language|Korean]], or [[Tungusic languages]], but no regular sound correspondences have been discovered to systematically account for the vocabularies of these various families, so any lexical similarities are considered to be due to chance or to borrowing.

[[Michael Fortescue]] suggested in 1998 that Nivkh might be related to the [[Mosan languages]] of North America.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fortescue |first=Michael D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Su_xVd0gTOcC&dq=nivkh%2520language%2520related%2520to%2520mosan&pg=PA232 |title=Language Relations Across The Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence |date=1998 |publisher=Cassell |isbn=0-304-70330-3 |location=London |language=en}}</ref> Later, in 2011, he argued that Nivkh, which he referred to as an "isolated Amuric language", was related to the [[Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages]], forming a [[Chukotko-Kamchatkan–Amuric]] language family.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fortescue |first=Michael |date=2011 |title=The Relationship of Nivkh to Chukotko-Kamchatkan Revisited |journal=Lingua |language=en |volume=121 |issue=8 |pages=1359–1376 |doi=10.1016/j.lingua.2011.03.001}}</ref> However, ''[[Glottolog]]'' considers the evidence to be "insufficient".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Amur Nivkh |url=https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/gily1242 |website=Glottolog |language=en}}</ref>

In 2015, [[Sergei Nikolaev (linguist)|Sergei Nikolaev]] argued in two papers for a systematic relationship between Nivkh and the [[Algic languages]] of North America, and a more distant relationship between these two together and the [[Wakashan languages]] of coastal [[British Columbia]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Nikolaev |first=Sergei L. |date=2015 |title=Toward the Reconstruction of Proto-Algonquian-Wakashan. Part 1: Proof of The Algonquian-Wakashan Relationship |url=https://www.academia.edu/15693360 |journal=Journal of Language Relationship |language=en |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=23–61 |doi=10.31826/jlr-2015-131-206 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Nikolaev |first=Sergei L. |date=2016 |title=Toward the Reconstruction of Proto-Algonquian-Wakashan. Part 2: Algonquian-Wakashan Sound Correspondences |url=https://www.academia.edu/28569450 |journal=Journal of Language Relationship |language=en |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=289–328 |doi=10.31826/jlr-2016-133-408 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

The Nivkh languages are included in the widely rejected [[Eurasiatic languages]] hypothesis by [[Joseph Greenberg]].<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Nivkh |encyclopedia=Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present |publisher=H.W. Wilson |location=New York |last=Mattissen |first=Johanna |date=2001 |page=515 |language=en |isbn=0-8242-0970-2}}</ref>

An automated computational analysis ([[Automated Similarity Judgment Program|ASJP]] 4) by Müller et al. (2013)<ref name="ASJP-4">Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ''[https://asjp.clld.org/static/WorldLanguageTree-004.zip ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)]''.</ref> found lexical similarities among Nivkh, [[Mongolic languages|Mongolic]], and [[Tungusic languages|Tungusic]], likely due to lexical borrowings.

Hudson & Robbeets (2020) presumed that a Nivkh-like language was once distributed in [[Korea]] and became the [[Substrata (linguistics)|substratum]] of [[Koreanic languages]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Hudson |first1=Mark J. |last2=Robbeets |first2=Martine |date=2020 |title=Archaeolinguistic Evidence for the Farming/Language Dispersal of Koreanic |journal=Evolutionary Human Sciences |language=en |volume=2 |at=e52 |doi=10.1017/ehs.2020.49 |pmid=37588366 |pmc=10427439 |doi-access=free}}</ref> [[Kim Bang-han]] proposed that [[placename glosses in the Samguk sagi|placename glosses in the ''Samguk sagi'']] reflect the original language of the Korean peninsula and a component in the formation of both Korean and Japanese. He proposed that this language was related to Nivkh.<ref name="aks">{{cite web|url=http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Contents/Item/E0078727|title=원시한반도어(原始韓半島語) - 한국민족문화대백과사전|website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]]|access-date=2019-09-18}}</ref> [[Juha Janhunen]] suggests the possibility that similar consonant stop systems in Koreanic and Nivkh may be due to ancient contact.<ref>{{cite journal |surname=Janhunen |given=Juha |title=Reconstructio externa linguae Ghiliacorum |journal=Studia Orientalia |volume=117 |year=2016 |pages=3–27 |url=https://journal.fi/store/article/view/59468/20635 |access-date=15 May 2020 }} p. 8.</ref>

== History ==
The [[Nivkh people]] have lived, by many accounts for thousands of years, on the island of Sakhalin and the Amur River. They maintained trade with the neighboring Ainu, Japanese, and Chinese, until Russian contact, which began in the 17th century.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last1=Ivanov |first1=S. |title=The Peoples of Siberia |last2=Levin |first2=M. |last3=Smolyak |first3=A. V. |date=1964 |publisher=The University of Chicago |location=Chicago |language=en |chapter=The Nikvhi}}</ref> The 19th century shows the first recorded decline of Nivkh numbers, with official estimates dropping from 1856 to 1889. This coincided with smallpox epidemics and the expansion of Sakhalin's prisoner population, as Russia began sending groups of its convicts to Sakhalin in 1873. At this time, reportedly few Nivkh spoke Russian.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Reid |first=Anne |url=https://archive.org/details/shamanscoatnativ00reid |title=The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia |date=2002 |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |isbn=0-8027-1399-8 |location=London |language=en |chapter=The Ainu, Nivkh, and Uilta |url-access=registration}}</ref>

The official Russian census reported similar numbers of ethnic Nivkhs in 1897 (4,500) and in 2002 (5,200). However, the number of native speakers among the ethnic Nivkhs dropped from 100% to 23.3% in the same period. All recorded native Nivkh speakers were bilingual in Russian, most of them were born in 1920-1940s,[http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/html/TOM_04_04.htm] when a significant decline in the number of native Nivkh speakers occurred, due to [[Joseph Stalin]]'s policy of collectivization imposed on indigenous economies,<ref name=":1" /> and in many cases, driving Nivkh individuals to hired labor, marking a departure from traditional means of subsistence.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Grant |first1=Bruce |title=In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas |date=1995 |publisher=Princeton University Press}}</ref> Many Nivkh were forcibly displaced from their more widely spread settlements to [[Nogliki]], a small city, in the process of centralization. The traditional Nivkh way of life was gradually and sometimes forcibly converted to a Soviet way of life, as changes in subsistence, diet, dwellings, and education have resulted. As of the 2010s, the Nivkh language was taught in grades 1–3 in several schools in both [[Sakhalin Oblast|Sakhalin]] and [[Khabarovsk Krai]]. A monthly newspaper "Nivkh dif" (Nivkh language) is published in Sakhalin. Nivkh language books are also regularly published in Russia.

==Phonology==

===Consonants===
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|+Nivkh consonants<ref name=J&G>Juha Janhunen & Ekaterina Gruzdeva (2016) Bringing the orthography of an indigenous language to the digital age: The case of Nivkh in the Russian Far East. ''Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul.</ref>
! colspan="2" |
! [[Labial consonant|Labial]]
! [[Alveolar consonant|Alveolar]]
! [[Palatal consonant|Palatal]]
! [[Velar consonant|Velar]]
! [[Uvular consonant|Uvular]]
! [[Glottal consonant|Glottal]]
|-
! colspan="2" | [[Nasal consonant|Nasal]]
| {{IPAlink|m}}
| {{IPAlink|n}}
| {{IPAlink|ɲ}}
| {{IPAlink|ŋ}}
|
|
|-
! rowspan="3" |[[Stop consonant|Stop]]
! <small>tenuis</small>
| {{IPAlink|p}}
| {{IPAlink|t}}
| {{IPAlink|t͡ʃ}}
| {{IPAlink|k}}
| {{IPAlink|q}}
|
|-
! <small>[[aspiration (phonetics)|aspirated]]</small>
| {{IPAlink|pʰ}}
| {{IPAlink|tʰ}}
| {{IPAlink|t͡ʃʰ}}
| {{IPAlink|kʰ}}
| {{IPAlink|qʰ}}
|
|-
! <small>voiced</small>
| {{IPAlink|b}}
| {{IPAlink|d}}
| {{IPAlink|d͡ʒ}}
| {{IPAlink|ɡ}}
| {{IPAlink|ɢ}}
|
|-
! rowspan="2" | [[Fricative consonant|Fricative]]
! <small>[[voicelessness|voiceless]]</small>
| {{IPAlink|f}}
| {{IPAlink|s}}
|
| {{IPAlink|x}}
| {{IPAlink|χ}}
|{{IPAlink|h}}
|-
! <small>[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]</small>
| {{IPAlink|v}}
| {{IPAlink|z}}
|
| {{IPAlink|ɣ}}
| {{IPAlink|ʁ}}
|
|-
! colspan="2" | [[Approximant consonant|Approximant]]
| {{IPAlink|w}}
| {{IPAlink|l}}
| {{IPAlink|j}}
|
|
|
|-
! rowspan="2" | [[Trill consonant|Trill]]
! <small>[[voicelessness|voiceless]]</small>
|
| colspan=2|{{IPAlink|r̥}}
|
|
|
|-
! <small>[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]</small>
|
| {{IPAlink|r}}
|
|
|
|
|}

The labial fricatives are weakly articulated, and have been described as both [[Bilabial consonant|bilabial]] {{IPA|[ɸ, β]}} and [[Labiodental consonant|labiodental]] {{IPA|[f, v]}}. The palatal stops may have some degree of affrication, as {{IPA|[tʃʰ, tʃ]}}.<ref name="CA" /> After nasals or {{IPA|/l/}}, the unaspirated stops become voiced {{IPA|[b, d, d͡ʒ, ɡ, ɢ]}}. Unlike consonant alternation, this can occur within a morpheme. The Amur dialect deletes some word-final nasals, which leads to word-initial voiced stops, allophonic in other dialects, being phonemic in Amur.{{cn|date=September 2024}} The voiceless trill is realized as {{IPA|[r̥ʃ]}} in East Sakhalin dialect (and presumably also in Amur dialect, where it is written {{angbr|рш}}) and as an untrilled {{IPA|[r̥ʃ]}} in North Sakhalin dialect.<ref name=J&G/> 

Consonants are palatalized in some contexts, most commonly in younger speakers, where all consonants are palatalized before {{IPA|[i]}} and {{IPA|[e]}}. Additionally, there is another context in which consonants are always palatalised, viz. before {{IPA|[e]}} when it precedes a uvular consonant {{IPA|[q, χ, ʁ]}}, e.g. {{IPA|[pʰeq]}} > {{IPA|[pʰʲe̞q]}} ‘chicken’.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Botma |first1=Bert |last2=Shiraishi |first2=Hidetoshi |title=Nivkh palatalisation : articulatory causes and perceptual effects |journal=Cambridge University Press |date=2014 |volume=31 |page=3}}</ref>

Nivkh features a process of [[lenition|consonant alternation]] like in [[Celtic languages]], in which [[morpheme]]-initial stops alternate with fricatives and trills:<ref name="CA">{{Cite journal |last=Shiraishi |first=Hidetoshi |date=2000 |title=Nivkh Consonant Alternation Does Not Involve Hardening |url=http://ext-web.edu.sgu.ac.jp/hidetos/HTML/nivkhcaa4.pdf |journal=Journal of Chiba University Eurasian Society |issue=3 |pages=89–119 |access-date=2009-08-26}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|+Consonant alternations in Nivkh
!
! colspan="5" | Aspirated ↔ voiceless
! colspan="5" | Unaspirated ↔ voiced
|- style="text-align: center;"
! Stop
| {{IPA link|pʰ}}
| {{IPA link|tʰ}}
| {{IPA link|t͡ʃʰ}}
| {{IPA link|kʰ}}
| {{IPA link|qʰ}}
| {{IPA link|p}}
| {{IPA link|t}}
| {{IPA link|t͡ʃ}}
| {{IPA link|k}}
| {{IPA link|q}}
|- style="text-align: center;"
! Continuant
| {{IPA link|f}}
| {{IPA link|r̥}}
| {{IPA link|s}}
| {{IPA link|x}}
| {{IPA link|χ}}
| {{IPA link|v}}
| {{IPA link|r}}
| {{IPA link|z}}
| {{IPA link|ɣ}}
| {{IPA link|ʁ}}
|}

This occurs when a morpheme is preceded by another morpheme within the same [[phrase]] (e.g. a [[prefix]] or an [[adjunct (grammar)|adjunct]]), unless the preceding morpheme ends itself in a fricative or trill, or in a nasal or {{IPA|/l/}}.
* {{IPA|/'''p'''əŋx/}} 'soup'
* {{IPA|/pənraj‿'''v'''əŋx/}} 'duck soup'
* {{IPA|/amsp‿'''v'''əŋx/}} 'kind of seal soup'
* but: {{IPA|/cxəf‿'''p'''əŋx/}} 'bear soup'

Only the morpheme-initial position is affected: other clusters ending in a stop are possible within a morpheme (e.g. {{IPA|/utku/}} "man").

In some [[transitive verb]]s, the process has been noted to apparently run in reverse (fricatives/trills fortiting to stops, with the same distribution). This has been taken a distinct process, but has also been explained to be fundamentally the same, with the [[citation form]] of these verbs containing an underlying stop, lenited due to the presence of a former ''i-'' prefix (which still survives in the citation form of other verbs, where it causes regular consonant alternation). Initial fricatives in nouns never change.<ref name="CA" />

===Vowels===
There are these six [[vowel]]s in Nivkh:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
|+Nivkh vowels
!
![[Front vowel|Front]]
![[Central vowel|Central]]
![[Back vowel|Back]]
|-
![[Close vowel|Close]]
|{{IPA link|i}}
|{{IPA link|ɨ}}
|{{IPA link|u}}
|-
![[Mid vowel|Mid]]
|{{IPA link|e}}
|
|{{IPA link|o}}
|-
![[Open vowel|Open]]
|
|{{IPA link|a}}
|
|}

Long vowels are not a phonemic feature of Nivkh but can arise due to sentence prosody, or compensatory lengthening when fricatives are deleted after the vowel.<ref>{{Cite thesis |last=Shiraishi |first=Hidetoshi |title=Topics in Nivkh Phonology |date=2006 |degree=PhD |publisher=University of Groningen |url=https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/topics-in-nivkh-phonology |language=en}}</ref>

===Stress===
Stress can fall on any syllable, but tends to be on the first; there is dialectal variation, and minimal pairs distinguished by stress seem to be rare.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mattissen |first=Johanna |title=Dependent-Head Synthesis in Nivkh: A Contribution to a Typology of Polysynthesis |date=2003 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |isbn=9027229651 |location=Amsterdam |pages=85–86 |language=en}}</ref>

==Alphabet==
{{main|Nivkh alphabets}}

The Nivkh language uses a [[Cyrillic alphabet]]. 

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Contemporary Nivkh Alphabet<ref name=J&G/>
| [[А|А а]] || [[Б|Б б]] || [[В|В в]] || [[Г|Г г]] || [[Ӷ|Ӷ ӷ]] || [[Ғ|Ғ ғ]] || [[Ӻ|Ӻ ӻ]] 
|-
| {{IPA|/a/}} || {{IPA|/b/}} || {{IPA|/v/}} || {{IPA|/ɡ/}} || {{IPA|/ɢ/}} || {{IPA|/ɣ/}} || {{IPA|/ʁ/}} 
|-
| [[Д|Д д]]|| [[Е|Е е]]|| [[Ё|Ё ё]]|| [[З|З з]]|| [[И|И и]]|| [[Й|Й й]]|| [[К|К к]]
|-
| {{IPA|/d/, /d͜ʒ/}}|| {{IPA|/(j)e/}}|| {{IPA|/(j)o/}}|| {{IPA|/z/}}|| {{IPA|/i/}}|| {{IPA|/j/}}|| {{IPA|/k/}}
|-
|  Кʼ кʼ || [[Қ|Қ қ]] ([[Ӄ|Ӄ ӄ]]) || Қʼ қʼ (Ӄʼ ӄʼ) || [[Л|Л л]]|| [[М|М м]]|| [[Н|Н н]]|| [[Ң|Ң ң]] ([[Ӈ|Ӈ ӈ]]) 
|-
| {{IPA|/kʰ/}}|| {{IPA|/q/}}|| {{IPA|/qʰ/}}|| {{IPA|/l/}}|| {{IPA|/m/}}|| {{IPA|/n/, /ɲ/}}|| {{IPA|/ŋ/}}
|-
| [[О|О о]]|| [[П|П п]]|| Пʼ пʼ || [[Р|Р р]]|| [[Р̆|Р̆ р̆]] ([[Р̌|Р̌ р̌]]) || [[С|С с]]|| [[Т|Т т]]
|-
| {{IPA|/o/}}|| {{IPA|/p/}}|| {{IPA|/pʰ/}}|| {{IPA|/r/}}|| {{IPA|/r̥/ ~ /ʃ/}}|| {{IPA|/s/}}|| {{IPA|/t/, /t͜ʃ/}}
|-
| Тʼ тʼ || [[У|У у]]|| [[Ф|Ф ф]]|| [[Х|Х х]]|| [[Ҳ|Ҳ ҳ]] ([[Ӽ|Ӽ ӽ]]) ||  [[Ӿ|Ӿ ӿ]]||  [[Ч|Чʼ чʼ]]
|-
| {{IPA|/tʰ/}}|| {{IPA|/u/, /w/}}|| {{IPA|/f/}}|| {{IPA|/x/}}|| {{IPA|/χ/}}||  {{IPA|/h/}}||  {{IPA|/t͜ʃʰ/}}
|-
| [[Ъ|Ъ ъ]]|| [[ь]] || [[Ы|Ы ы]]|| [[Э|Э э]]|| [[Ю|Ю ю]]|| [[Я|Я я]] ||  
|-
| {{IPA|(d, n, t)}}|| {{IPA|(d͜ʒ, ɲ, t͜ʃ)}}|| {{IPA|/ə/}}|| {{IPA|/e/}}|| {{IPA|/(j)u/}}|| {{IPA|/(j)a/}}||
|}

Other letters of the [[Russian alphabet]] are only used for Russian loan words. Various [[allograph]]s of the letters with descenders are found, and ''er'' may take either a [[breve]] or a [[caron]]. The allographs listed first in the table above are the choice of ''[[:ru:Нивх диф|Нивх диф]]'', the only Nivkh newspaper. 

The letters Д, Н and Т stands for two sounds each. When they are followed by a [[iotized]] vowel letter, or at the end of a syllable followed by [[ь]], they stand for the affricate or palatal consonants {{IPA|/d͜ʒ, ɲ, t͜ʃ/}}; otherwise they stand for the alveolar consonants {{IPA|/d, n, t/}}. At the beginning of a syllable, the letters Е, Ё, Ю, Я stands for {{IPA|/je, jo, ju, ja/}}.

The letter Ӷ is not used in Amur dialect, while {{IPA|/r̥/}} is spelled РШ.

==Grammar==
Nivkh is an agglutinating synthetic language. It has a developed case system, as well as other grammatical markers, but no grammatical gender. The basic word order of Nivkh is [[subject–object–verb]], the subject being frequently omitted in speech.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Hidetoshi Shiraishi |year=2000 |title=Nivkh consonant alternation does not involve hardening |url=http://ext-web.edu.sgu.ac.jp/hidetos/HTML/nivkhcaa4.pdf |journal=Journal of Chiba University Eurasian Society |issue=3 |pages=89–119 |accessdate=2009-08-26}} {{verify source|date=September 2023|reason=This ref was deleted Special:Diff/748608692 by a bug in VisualEditor and later restored by a bot from the original cite located at Special:Permalink/748117273 cite #9 - verify the cite is accurate and delete this template. [[User:GreenC_bot/Job_18]]}}</ref> Nivkh is notable for the high degree of incorporation between words. For example, morphemes that express spatial relationships (prepositions or postpositions in many other languages) are incorporated into the noun to which they relate.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gruzdeva |first=Ekaterina |date=2002 |title=The Linguistic Consequences of Nivkh Language Attrition |journal=SKY Journal of Linguistics |language=en |volume=15 |pages=85–103}}</ref> Words consist of easily definable roots and productive grammatical morphemes, most of which are suffixes. Nivkh has no adjectives, but rather verbs that describe a state of being. There are two verb tenses: non-future and future. The non-future form may combine with adverbials, as well as context, to indicate a time frame.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nedjalkov |first1=Vladimir |title=A Syntax of the Nivkh Language: The Amur Dialect |last2=Otaina |first2=Galina |date=2013 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |location=Philadelphia, PA |language=en}}</ref>

As Russian has become the dominant language in all spheres of life, Nivkh grammar has changed in the last century. For example, Nivkh has recently begun to mark plurals on counting nouns and pairs, a change that originated from the grammar rules of Russian. However, it has been postulated that due to the vastly differing grammatical structures of the two tongues, grammatical interference has not been extensive. Simplification has occurred past borrowed Russian structure, though; due to disuse of the language and a changing culture, many of the complex morphological aspects of Nivkh have been simplified or fallen out of use.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gruzdeva |first=Ekaterina |date=2000 |title=Aspects of Russian-Nivkh Grammatical Interference: The Nivkh Imperative |journal=Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics |language=en |volume=28 |pages=121–134 |jstor=40997157}}</ref> In a process referred to as obsolescence, things like the distinction between the morpheme for counting sledges and the morpheme for counting fishnets has disappeared, with speakers opting to use more general categories of counting numbers or other descriptors.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Crystal |first=David |url=https://archive.org/details/languagedeath00crys_755 |title=Language Death |date=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521653213 |location=Cambridge |pages=[https://archive.org/details/languagedeath00crys_755/page/n33 23] |language=en |url-access=limited}}</ref>

==Language contact with the Ainu people==
The [[Ainu people|Ainu]] appear to have experienced intensive contact with the [[Nivkh people|Nivkhs]] during the course of their history. It is not known to what extent this has affected the language. Linguists believe the vocabulary shared between the [[Ainu language]] and Nivkh (historically spoken in the northern half of [[Sakhalin]] and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due to [[Loanword|borrowing]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vovin |first=Alexander |title=Crosslinguistics and Linguistic Crossings in Northeast Asia: Papers on the Languages of Sakhalin and Adjacent Regions |date=2016 |publisher=Helsinki Area and Language Studies Initiative |isbn=978-951-9380-89-6 |editor-last=Gruzdeva |editor-first=Ekaterina |location=Helsinki |pages=29–38 |language=en |chapter=On the Linguistic Prehistory of Hokkaidō |editor-last2=Janhunen |editor-first2=Juha}}</ref>

== Sample text ==
<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gruzdeva |first=Ekaterina |last2=Bugaeva |first2=Anna |date=2021 |title=A unique linguistic text in Nivkh by A. A. Yushkina |url=https://iling-ran.ru/languages_of_russia/2021_stage1/doc5_appendix4.pdf |journal=Journal of Ainu and Indigenous Studies}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
!English
!Cyrillic Nivkh
!Phonetic transcription
|-
|Hello, dear friends!
I am very pleased to meet you.
The aspirated sound [chʰ] is pronounced by drawing the tongue in and opening the teeth slightly on a sharp exhale.
|Урла муғв к‘инӈула ӈафӄғу!
Ч‘ыӈ ордь ни маӈгут эзмудьра.
Ӿилх ыӈг ми ниняӄ тывыгута, ари ӿава ӈығску т‘аӻрух п‘ова кутлироӽ тьыу [ч‘] т‘ат итт п‘угута.
|Urla muɣf kʰinŋula ŋafq-ɣu!
Cʰəŋ or-ɟ ɲi maŋgut e-zmu-ɟ=ra.
Hilx əŋg mi ɲiɲaq təvə-gu-ta ari hava ŋəɣs-ku tʰaʁr-ux pʰova kutli-roχ cəu [cʰ] tʰat it-t pʰu-gu-ta.
|}

==See also==
*[[Wiktionary:Appendix:List of Proto-Nivkh reconstructions|List of Proto-Nivkh reconstructions]] (Wiktionary)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
{{refbegin}}
* {{Cite book |last=Arefiev |first=A. L. (А. Л. Арефьев) |url=https://www.5top100.ru/upload/iblock/312/3125b16cfed8d1a9d124bea5a35ec3c2.pdf |title=Yazyki korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dalnego Vostoka v sisteme obrazovaniya: istoriya i sovremennost |date=2014 |publisher=Tsentr sotsialnogo prognozirovaniya i marketinga |isbn=978-5-906001-21-4 |location=Moskva |language=ru |script-title=ru:Языки коренных малочисленных народов Севера, Сибири и Дальнего Востока в системе образования: история и современность |trans-title=Languages of the Indigenous Minorities of the North, Siberia and the Far East in Educational System: Past and Present |access-date=1 April 2020 |archive-date=2 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220202071835/https://www.5top100.ru/upload/iblock/312/3125b16cfed8d1a9d124bea5a35ec3c2.pdf |url-status=dead }}
* {{Cite book |last=Gruzdeva |first=Ekaterina |title=Nivkh |date=1998 |publisher=Lincom Europa |isbn=3-89586-039-5 |location=Munich |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Maddieson |first=Ian |title=Patterns of sounds |date=1984 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-26536-3 |location=Cambridge |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Mattissen |first=Johanna |title=Dependent-Head Synthesis in Nivkh: A Contribution to a Typology of Polysynthesis |date=2003 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |isbn=1-58811-476-7 |location=Amsterdam |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Nedjalkov |first1=Vladimir P. |title=A Syntax of the Nivkh Language: The Amur Dialect |last2=Otaina |first2=Galina A. |date=2013 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |location=Amsterdam |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Tangiku |first=Itsuji 丹菊逸治 |title=Nivufugo Saharin hōgen kiso goishū (Soguriki shūhen chiiki) |date=2008 |publisher=Tōkyō Gaikokugo Daigaku Ajia Afurika Gengo Bunka Kenkyūjo |location=Tōkyō |language=ja |script-title=ja:ニヴフ語サハリン方言基礎語彙集 (ソグリキ周辺地域) |trans-title=Basic Vocabulary of the Sakhalin Dialect of Nivkh Language (Nogliki Dialect)}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Austerlitz |first=R |date=1956 |title=Gilyak Nursery Words |journal=Word |language=en |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=260–279 |doi=10.1080/00437956.1956.11659604 |doi-access=free}}
* {{Cite book |last=Nakamura |first=Chiyo 中村チヨ |title=Giriyāku no mukashibanashi |date=1992 |publisher=Hokkaidō shuppan kikaku sentā |language=ja |script-title=ja:ギリヤークの昔話}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Incubator|code=niv}}
* [http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/nivkhs.shtml The Nivkhs] from [[The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire|The Red Book]]
* [http://ext-web.edu.sgu.ac.jp/hidetos/ Sound Materials of the Nivkh Language] The World's Largest Sound Archive of the Nivkh Language on the Web
* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/nivkh.htm Nivkh alphabet and language] at Omniglot
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110920041617/http://www.ling-atlas.jp/r/tale/list?lang=e Nivkh Folk Talkes]

{{Paleosiberian languages}}
{{Language families}}
{{Eurasian languages}}

<!--Categories-->
[[Category:Nivkh languages| ]]
[[Category:Nivkh|Language]]
[[Category:Agglutinative languages]]
[[Category:Languages of Russia]]
[[Category:Manchuria]]
[[Category:Paleo-Siberian languages]]
[[Category:Polysynthetic languages]]
[[Category:Subject–object–verb languages]]
[[Category:Language families]]