Берінг бұғазы аймағындағы тілдердің болжамды туыстығы

Proposed language family including Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskimo–Aleut and possibly Nivkh

Uralo Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, and Eskaleut. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko Kamchatkan, in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait. Some have attempted to include Nivkh in Uralo Siberian. Until 2011, it also included Chukotko Kamchatkan. However, after 2011 Fortescue only included Uralic, Yukaghir and Eskaleut in the theory, although he argued that Uralo Siberian languages have influenced Chukotko Kamchatkan. Connections with the Uralic and other language families are generally seen as speculative, including Fortescue's Uralo Siberian hypothesis. Fortescue's observations have been evaluated by specialists as "inspiring" and "compelling" but are viewed as scattered evidence and still remain highly speculative and unproven and the soundness of the reconstructed common ancestors are challenging to evaluate.

Structural similarities between Uralic and Eskaleut languages were observed early. In 1746, the Danish theologian da compared Greenlandic to Hungarian. In 1818, Rasmus Rask considered Greenlandic to be related to the Uralic languages, Finnish in particular, and presented a list of lexical correspondences (Rask also considered Uralic and Altaic to be related to each other). In 1959, Knut Bergsland published the paper The Eskimo–Uralic Hypothesis, in which he, like other authors before him, presented a number of grammatical similarities and a small number of lexical correspondences. In 1962, Morris Swadesh proposed a relationship between the Eskaleut and Chukotko Kamchatkan language families. In 1998, Michael Fortescue presented more detailed arguments in his book, Language Relations across Bering Strait. His title evokes Morris Swadesh's 1962 article, "Linguistic relations across the Bering Strait".

Some or all of the four Uralo Siberian families have been included in more extensive groupings of languages (see links below). Fortescue's hypothesis does not oppose or exclude these various proposals. In particular, he considers that a remote relationship between Uralo Siberian and Altaic (or some part of Altaic) is likely (see Ural–Altaic languages). However, Fortescue holds that Uralo Siberian lies within the bounds of the provable, whereas Nostratic may be too remote a grouping to ever be convincingly demonstrated. The University of Leiden linguist Frederik Kortlandt (2006:1) asserts that Indo Uralic (a proposed language family consisting of Uralic and Indo European) is itself a branch of Uralo Siberian and that, furthermore, the Nivkh language also belongs to Uralo Siberian. This would make Uralo Siberian the proto language of a much vaster language family. Kortlandt (2006:3) considers that Uralo Siberian and Altaic (defined by him as consisting of Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese) may be coordinate branches of the Eurasiatic language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg but rejected by most linguists.

Fortescue, Michael. 1998. Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London and New York: Cassell. Kortlandt, Frederik. 2006. "Indo Uralic and Altaic".