Yupik languages

The Yupik languages are a group of languages spoken by the Yupik peoples who live in western and south-central Alaska and Chukotka. These languages are part of a larger family called Eskaleut languages. Even though the Yupik languages are related, people who speak one Yupik language might not understand another very well because they have changed over time in different ways.

One of the Yupik languages, called Sirenik, stopped being used in 1997 and is no longer spoken by anyone. The Yupik languages began to separate from other language families, like Aleut and Inuit languages, many years ago. This separation happened naturally as people moved and lived in different areas. Today, these languages help keep the culture and history of the Yupik peoples alive.

List of languages

The Yupik languages are a group of related languages spoken by the Yupik peoples. There are several different Yupik languages, and they are not all easy to understand between each other.

Some of the Yupik languages include:

• Naukan Yupik: spoken by about 100 people in Lavrentiya, Lorino, and Uelen on the Chukotka Peninsula.
• Central Siberian Yupik: spoken by many people in the Russian Far East and on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska.
• Central Alaskan Yup'ik: spoken by around 20,000 people in parts of Alaska, including areas around Norton Sound, the Alaska Peninsula, and islands like Nunivak.
• Alutiiq: spoken by about 500 to 1,000 people from the Alaska Peninsula to Prince William Sound.
• Sirenik: this language is no longer spoken. It was once used on the Chukchi Peninsula.

Phonology

Further information: Central Alaskan Yup'ik language § Phonology

Consonants

Central Yup'ik Consonants:

c [ts][tʃ], g [ɣ], gg [x], k, l [l], ll [ɬ], m, ḿ (voiceless m), n (alveolar), ń (voiceless n), ng [ŋ], ńg (voiceless ŋ), p, q [q], r [ʁ], rr [χ], s [z], ss [s], t (alveolar), û [w], v [v][w], vv [f], w [χʷ], y [j], (gemination of preceding consonant)

Vowels

Yupik languages have four vowels: 'a', 'i', 'u' and schwa (ə). They have from 13 to 27 consonants.

Central Yup'ik Vowels:

a, aa, e (ə) (schwa), i, ii, u, uu

(In proximity to the uvular consonants 'q', 'r' or 'rr', the vowel /i/ is pronounced [e], and /u/ is pronounced [o].)

Prosody

Syllable

Yup'ik verbs always begin with a root morpheme like "kaig" - to be hungry, and always end with a pronoun.

Yupik is a polysynthetic language that can have analytic alternatives; speakers can express similar ideas in a series of words with a number of bound morphemes.

Stress

The stress pattern of Central Siberian and Central Alaskan is generally iambic where stress occurs on the second syllable of each two-syllable metrical foot. This can be seen in words consisting of light (L) syllables. Here, the parsing of syllables into feet is represented with parentheses:

As can be seen above, the footing of a Yupik word starts from the left edge of the word. (Therefore, a foot parsing of L(L'L)(L'L) is not permitted.) Syllables that cannot be parsed into feet in words with an odd number of syllables are not stressed. (Thus, a parsing of (L'L)('L) is impossible.)

Additionally, heavy (H) syllables (consisting of two moras) are obligatorily stressed:

However, there is a restriction against stress falling on the final syllable of a phrase:

(L'L)(L'L) (phrase-internal)

(L'L)LL (phrase-final)

Stressed syllables undergo phonetic lengthening in Yupik although the details differ from dialect to dialect. Generally, a foot consisting of light CV syllables will have the stressed vowel at a greater length than the unstressed vowel. That can be analyzed as light syllables changing to heavy under stress:

Both Central Siberian and Central Alaskan Yup'ik show this iambic lengthening of light syllables.

When the stressed syllable is underlyingly heavy (such as LHL)), there is dialectal variation. The Chaplinski variety of Central Siberian Yupik shows no extra lengthening of the already long vowel: the heavy syllables remain heavy (no change). The St. Lawrence variety of Central Siberian Yupik has further iambic overlengthening, resulting in a change from underlying heavy to a phonetically superheavy syllable (S). In those cases, Central Alaskan Yup'ik changes the first light syllable in what would be a (LH) foot to a heavy syllable which then receives stress. The light to heavy shift is realized as consonant gemination (of the onset) in CV syllables and as consonantal lengthening of the coda in CVC syllables:

Note that in the Chaplinski variety because of iambic lengthening there is a neutralization of vowel length contrast in nonfinal stressed syllables.

Morphology

The Yupik languages, like other Eskimo–Aleut languages, are a special type of language called an affixally polysynthetic language.

In Yupik, words are made by adding many endings, called suffixes, to a single starting part, called a root. This creates long words that can have meanings like whole sentences. The order of these suffixes can change to show different ideas, except for certain endings that always come at the end of the word.

Writing systems

The Yupik languages did not have a way to write them down until Europeans arrived in the early 1800s. Missionaries and their Yupik helpers were the first to create written Yupik by translating religious books. This included work by Saint Innocent of Alaska, Reverend John Hinz (see John Henry Kilbuck), and Uyaquq.

Later, Yupik people in Alaska and Siberia started using a Latin alphabet that Moravian missionaries created in Greenland and brought to Labrador. After the United States purchased Alaska, Yupik children learned to write English in school. Some also learned a Yupik writing system made by Rev. Hinz using Latin letters.

In the 1960s, scholars and Yupik speakers at the University of Alaska created a new writing system. This system could be typed on an English keyboard and used special letters to show each sound in the Yupik language. For example, it uses 'q' for a special sound and marks long consonants with a plus sign after them.