Uralic–Yukaghir languages

Proposed language family

Uralic–Yukaghir, also known as Uralo Yukaghir, is a proposed language family composed of Uralic and Yukaghir. Uralic is a large and diverse family of languages spoken in northern and eastern Europe and northwestern Siberia. Among the better known Uralic languages are Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian. Yukaghir is a small family of languages spoken in eastern Siberia. It formerly extended over a much wider area (Collinder 1965:30). It consists of two surviving languages, Tundra Yukaghir and Kolyma Yukaghir. Proponents of the Uralo Siberian language family include Uralo Yukaghir as one of its two branches, alongside the Siberian languages (Nivkh, (formerly) Chukotko Kamchatkan and Eskimo Aleut).

Similarities between Uralic and Yukaghir were first pointed out by Paasonen (1907) and Lewy (1928), although they did not consider these to be sufficient evidence for a genetic relationship between the two. Holger Pedersen (1931) included Uralic and Yukaghir in his proposed Nostratic language family, and also noted some similarities between them. A genetic relationship between Uralic and Yukaghir was first argued for in detail in 1940, independently by Karl Bouda and Björn Collinder. The hypothesis was further elaborated by Collinder in subsequent publications, and also by other scholars including Harms (1977), Nikolaeva (1988) and Piispanen (2013). Uralic–Yukaghir is listed as a language family in A Guide to the World's Languages by Merritt Ruhlen (1987), and is accepted as a unit in controversial long range proposals such as "Eurasiatic" by Joseph Greenberg (2000, 2002) and "Nostratic" by Allan Bomhard (2008), both based on evidence collected by earlier scholars like Collinder.

According to Vladimir Napolskikh, the split between Finno Ugric and Samoyedic branches might have occurred somewhere in the area between the Ob River and the Irtysh River, following an earlier split between Proto Uralic and Proto Yukaghir somewhere in Eastern Siberia.