# Native American languages **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 14, 2009, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815 "2009-02-14T12:53:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Batfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Batfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batfish)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/1 "2009-02-14T12:53:52Z")
Since the americas were populated from asia via a land-bridge between continents, are there any relations between the languages of indigenous americans before european contact and those of asia? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/2 "2009-02-14T13:20:36Z")
In a word, NO. More detail: There’s one exception, which sort of goes to prove the rule: ‘Eskimo’-group languages include one (I don’t recall which) spoken by small ‘Eskimo’ groups on both sides of the Bering Strait. Other than this, there are no demonstrable links between any Old World language group and any New World one. Some of the theorists seeking out relationships at a deeper substratum than Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afro-Asiatic do see hints of relationships between Old World and Native Amercian language phyla – but what one theorist advances, the next one shoots down. Suffice it to say there’s no consensus, except the one that there’s no proven relationship. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/3 "2009-02-14T14:04:42Z")
As Polycarp says, except for some small amount of movement by Eskimos back and forth across the Bering Strait, there was no communication between the Americas and Asia before the time of Columbus for several thousand years. Except for those Eskimos then, there has been no relationship between the peoples of Asia and of the Americas for maybe 12,000 years. Languages that are related at a level of 12,000 years are too far apart to be related to each other in any way that can be noticed even by linguists. A general rule is that two languages which are related at a depth of perhaps 2,000 years are noticeably similar even if you have no training in linguistics. So the Germanic languages (German, English, Dutch, Swedish, etc.) have enough similar words that you could probably pick out the relationship with no training. Languages related at a level of about 6,000 years are close enough that a linguist could, with enough work, notice the relationship. So linguists have worked out the relationships between the Indo-European languages (like, for instance, English, Russian, and Hindi), which are related at that depth, although it would probably be impossible for anyone untrained in linguistics to notice those relationships. The languages of the Americas and those of Asia are just too far apart to have any noticeable similarities. There are some linguists that claim to be able to find relationships between languages that are separated at levels of about 15,000 years, like those who believe in the Nostratic superfamily, but nearly all other linguists think that those linguists are just trying too hard to see patterns that aren’t there. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/4 "2009-02-14T14:31:42Z")
Oh, FTR, I was following the Alaskan custom of using ‘Eskimo’ to include both Inuit languages and the related languages spoken in and around Alaska; I’m aware the term is considered offensive by some Inuit. But until there’s an accepted standard that comprises both Inuit and related tongues, it’s the best available generic term, and is used with no intent to offend. It’s probably worth noting, in passing, that there are nearly if not complertely as many unrelated language families documented from the Americas as there are in Eurasia/Africa/Oceania. Most are completely unfamiliar except to linguists and anthropologists, e.g., Na-Dene, Athabaskan, Uto-Aztecan, Hokan, Ge-Pano-Carib, Macro-Chibchan. ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/5 "2009-02-14T14:41:15Z")
\*\*Polycarp \*\*- excuse me if you have already seen this, but I think you and others will really enjoy this short film with [Wade Davis](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7vK0pOvKI). It’s extremely intriguing look at cultures at the edge of the world - I am auditing a deep ecology class right now and we just watched this short film. Enjoy - Talks a lot about language and development of human communicative behaviors over time. Wade Davis is one of the minds behind Nat Geo’s Planet Earth Series. I’d actually love to add this vid to the thread and see what others think. ---
**Author:** ![Batfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Batfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batfish)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/6 "2009-02-14T16:48:58Z")
Thanks everyone for the replies. ---
**Author:** ![fandango](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b5ac83/32.png) [@fandango](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fandango)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/7 "2009-02-14T17:50:54Z")
I think the Inuit language is Yupik, and there are American and Siberian varieties. There is a theory of a Dene-Caucasian macrofamily, which would include Navajo, Chinese, Georgian and of course Basque (because Basque seems to be the first thing people jumped to when trying to construct large families.) This theory is fairly new and like all such theories, HIGHLY speculative. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/8 "2009-02-14T18:54:42Z")
Yupik eskimos speak various Yupik languages. Inuit eskimos speak Inuit languages. > **[Yupik languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yupik_language)** > > The Yupik languages (/ˈjuːpɪk/) are a family of languages spoken by the Yupik peoples of western and south-central Alaska and Chukotka. The Yupik languages differ enough from one another that they are not mutually intelligible, although speakers of one of the languages may understand the general idea of a conversation of speakers of another of the languages. One of them, Sirenik, has been extinct since 1997. > The Yupik languages are in the family of Eskaleut languages. The Aleut and Proto-Eskimoa... > **[Inuit languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_language)** > > The Inuit languages are a closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and the adjacent subarctic regions as far south as Labrador. The Inuit languages are one of the two branches of the Eskimoan language family, the other being the Yupik languages, which are spoken in Alaska and the Russian Far East. Most Inuit people live in one of three countries: Greenland, a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark; Canada, specifi... ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/9 "2009-02-14T22:28:16Z")
And the Yupik and Inuit languages are fairly closely related, having separated only about a thousand years ago. They’re more closely related than, say, English and Dutch. It would be easy for someone who knows both to see their relationship, but it’s not quite close enough for someone who speaks one to really understand the other. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/10 "2009-02-15T14:54:47Z")
In a word: YES. The [Yeniseian Languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeniseian_languages) of central Sibera have been found to be related to the Na-Dene languages of North America. (New result but looks good.) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/11 "2009-02-15T17:24:54Z")
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The article says: \> However, it will take some time for the linguistic community to properly evaluate \> this proposal. If this is a real relationship, it goes back about 8,000 years, which is just about the longest that most linguists accept that any relationship could be detected using the best techniques we have at the moment. ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/12 "2009-02-15T18:29:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Southern Athabaskan languages are tonal languages. Hoijer and other linguists analyze Southern Athabaskan languages as having 4 tones (using Americanist transcription system): > high (marked with acute accent ´, Example: á) > low (marked with grave accent `, Example: à) > rising (marked with háček ˇ, Example: ǎ) > falling (marked with circumflex ˆ, Example: â) (from the Wiki article above) Navajo and Apache are tonal?! Who knew? Ignorance fought. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2009, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/13 "2009-02-16T00:54:19Z")
Couple of questions, **Wendell** (or any other trained linguists): 1. This whole thing with “ergative” languages – where the direct object of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive are syntactically equivalent units, for those who don’t know the term – does that seem to indicate a deep relationship between the languages that display it, or is it something ‘logical’, like possessive forms, that Indo-European just somehow missed using? 2. I know that Native American language phyla are pretty much in flux --when I firest started reading up on this, there was something called Hokan-Siouan that appears to be much like Ural-Altaic, a group that at one time seemed to have wide acceptance that is now rejected. But the one I’m wondering about in particular is one termed Andean-Equatorial, which included Quechuan, Aymaran, Tupi-Guarani, and Arawak tongues. Has this been solidly debunked? Was it as widely accepted a grouping as I seem to recall it being? ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2009, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/14 "2009-02-16T02:16:02Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > This whole thing with “ergative” languages – where the direct object of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive are syntactically equivalent units, for those who don’t know the term – does that seem to indicate a deep relationship between the languages that display it, or is it something ‘logical’, like possessive forms, that Indo-European just somehow missed using? I suppose that’s the big question. Yes, “logical” is something that belongs in quotation marks; language is rarely “logical,” whatever that may mean. > [@Polycarp](#): > > 1. I know that Native American language phyla are pretty much in flux --when I firest started reading up on this, there was something called Hokan-Siouan that appears to be much like Ural-Altaic, a group that at one time seemed to have wide acceptance that is now rejected. But the one I’m wondering about in particular is one termed Andean-Equatorial, which included Quechuan, Aymaran, Tupi-Guarani, and Arawak tongues. Has this been solidly debunked? Was it as widely accepted a grouping as I seem to recall it being? I think that it’s all mostly speculation, and to take and absolutist stand on any of these things is more an effort to advance one’s standing in academia. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2009, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/15 "2009-02-16T02:27:14Z")
My ignorance is pretty much bottomless on this one; but, to rephrase the OP “ **What chance is there that the language of the Navajo is related to Siberian languages**?” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2009, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/16 "2009-02-16T13:18:40Z")
It depends what you mean by the Siberian languages (and it also depends what you mean by related). If you mean the group usually called the Paleosiberian languages, they are actually a group of three different families that are usually swept together into this one category because no one knows what else to do with them: > **[Paleosiberian languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleosiberian_languages)** > > Paleo-Siberian languages are several language isolates and small language families spoken in parts of northeastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. They are not known to have any genetic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated the more dominant languages, particularly Tungusic and latterly Turkic languages, that have largely displaced them. Even more recently, Turkic (at least in Siberia) and especially Tungusic have been displaced in their tu... Notice that Ket and the other Yeniseian languages are no longer considered part of this group because some linguists now think that those languages are part of a group with the Dené languages. So it’s not even clear that the Paleosiberian languages are related to each other, let alone to any other family. Furthermore, what do you mean by related? Do you mean that the languages are demonstrably related to each other by accepted linguistic techniques? Or do you just mean that they are ultimately related to each other if you go back far enough? Of course all languages are related to each other if you go back 100,000 years or so ago to the point where some original language started to split up and evolve into all present-day languages. The Dené languages and the Paleosiberian languages are probably more closely related to each other than that, but nobody has been able to prove any relationship so far. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/native-american-languages/485815/17 "2009-02-16T15:54:06Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Couple of questions, **Wendell** (or any other trained linguists): > > 1. I know that Native American language phyla are pretty much in flux --when I firest started reading up on this, there was something called Hokan-Siouan that appears to be much like Ural-Altaic, a group that at one time seemed to have wide acceptance that is now rejected. But the one I’m wondering about in particular is one termed Andean-Equatorial, which included Quechuan, Aymaran, Tupi-Guarani, and Arawak tongues. Has this been solidly debunked? Was it as widely accepted a grouping as I seem to recall it being? IANATL, but from what I’ve read, there are proposed groupings of Amerindian families above the level of pretty-much-accepted-families (like Hokan, Uto-Aztecan, Chibchan, etc.) that are accepted to one degree or another. One such possible grouping which intrigues me is Penutian-Mayan, which would connect a group of languages once spoken in parts of California (Penutian) with the Maya languages, as well as perhaps some U.S. Gulf coast languages. I would guess that maybe 30% of linguists accept this idea. Grouping Maya languages with Zoque/Mixe (spoken in parts of Oaxaca state and the Isthmus of Tehuantapec, Mexico), however, is less controversial: perhaps 80% of linguists would accept this grouping. Just a few examples to show the range of acceptance of various proposed Amerindian groupings.