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89-599: The Tungusic languages / t ʊ ŋ ˈ ɡ ʊ s ɪ k / (also known as Manchu–Tungus and Tungus ) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples . Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the dozen living languages of the Tungusic language family. The term "Tungusic" is from an exonym for the Evenk people (Ewenki) used by

178-474: A Japonic language family rather than dialects of Japanese, the Japanese language itself was considered a language isolate and therefore the only language in its family. Most of the world's languages are known to be related to others. Those that have no known relatives (or for which family relationships are only tentatively proposed) are called language isolates , essentially language families consisting of

267-462: A Proto-Tungusic *t > Manchu s when followed by *j in the same stem, with any exceptions arising from loanwords. Some linguists believe there are connections between the vowel harmony of Proto-Tungusic and some of the neighboring non-Tungusic languages. For example, there are proposals for an areal or genetic correspondence between the vowel harmonies of Proto-Korean , Proto-Mongolian , and Proto-Tungusic based on an original RTR harmony . This

356-624: A Yuan-era temple have been excavated near the village of Tyr . During the reigns of the Yongle and Xuande Emperors (early-15th century), the Ming dynasty reached the Amur in their drive to establish control over the lands adjacent to the Ming Empire to the northeast, which would later become known as Manchuria. Expeditions headed by the eunuch Yishiha reached Tyr several times between 1411 and

445-509: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar unique innovations in Germanic , Baltic and Slavic that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language. But legitimate uncertainty about whether shared innovations are areal features, coincidence, or inheritance from a common ancestor, leads to disagreement over the proper subdivisions of any large language family. The concept of language families

534-426: A number of sign languages have developed in isolation and appear to have no relatives at all. Nonetheless, such cases are relatively rare and most well-attested languages can be unambiguously classified as belonging to one language family or another, even if this family's relation to other families is not known. Language contact can lead to the development of new languages from the mixture of two or more languages for

623-647: A short military campaign in 1685. The Treaty of Nerchinsk , concluded in 1689, marked the end of the hostilities: it left the entire Amur valley, from the convergence of the Shilka and the Ergune downstream, in Chinese hands. Fedor Soimonov was sent to map the then little explored area of the Amur in 1757. He mapped the Shilka, which was partly in Chinese territory, but was turned back when he reached its confluence with

712-427: A single language and have no single ancestor. Isolates are languages that cannot be proven to be genealogically related to any other modern language. As a corollary, every language isolate also forms its own language family — a genetic family which happens to consist of just one language. One often cited example is Basque , which forms a language family on its own; but there are many other examples outside Europe. On

801-512: A single language. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations. Thus, different sources, especially over time, can give wildly different numbers of languages within a certain family. Classifications of the Japonic family , for example, range from one language (a language isolate with dialects) to nearly twenty—until the classification of Ryukyuan as separate languages within

890-462: A single language. There are an estimated 129 language isolates known today. An example is Basque . In general, it is assumed that language isolates have relatives or had relatives at some point in their history but at a time depth too great for linguistic comparison to recover them. A language isolate is classified based on the fact that enough is known about the isolate to compare it genetically to other languages but no common ancestry or relationship

979-447: A word, including suffixes, are either one or the other. Rounded vowels in the root of a word cause all the following vowels in the word to become rounded, but not those before the rounded vowel. Those rules are not absolute, and there are many individual exceptions. Vowel length is phonemic in most languages, with many words distinguished based on the distinction between short vowel and long vowel. Languages without long vowels consist of

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1068-487: Is a geographic area having several languages that feature common linguistic structures. The similarities between those languages are caused by language contact, not by chance or common origin, and are not recognized as criteria that define a language family. An example of a sprachbund would be the Indian subcontinent . Shared innovations, acquired by borrowing or other means, are not considered genetic and have no bearing with

1157-489: Is a very important language for the reconstruction of Proto-Tungusic. Other Tungusic languages have relatively short or no written traditions. Since around the 20th century, some of these other languages can be written in a Russian-based Cyrillic script , but the languages remain primarily spoken languages only. The earliest Western accounts of Tungusic languages came from the Dutch traveler Nicolaes Witsen , who published in

1246-483: Is also a sister language to that fourth branch, then the two sister languages are more closely related to each other than to that common ancestral proto-language. The term macrofamily or superfamily is sometimes applied to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods. Some close-knit language families, and many branches within larger families, take

1335-452: Is an absolute isolate: it has not been shown to be related to any other modern language despite numerous attempts. A language may be said to be an isolate currently but not historically if related but now extinct relatives are attested. The Aquitanian language , spoken in Roman times, may have been an ancestor of Basque, but it could also have been a sister language to the ancestor of Basque. In

1424-543: Is based on the historical observation that languages develop dialects , which over time may diverge into distinct languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than familiar biological ancestry, in which species do not crossbreed. It is more like the evolution of microbes, with extensive lateral gene transfer . Quite distantly related languages may affect each other through language contact , which in extreme cases may lead to languages with no single ancestor, whether they be creoles or mixed languages . In addition,

1513-625: Is believed there are at least 123 species of fish from 23 families inhabiting the Amur. The majority are of the Gobioninae subfamily of Cypriniformes , followed in number by Salmonidae . Several of the species are endemic . Pseudaspius and Mesocottus are monotypic genera found only in the Amur and some nearby coastal rivers. Other animals inhabiting this region include the Amur falcon , Amur leopard and Amur tiger ; while some notable local flora include Amur cork tree , Amur maple and

1602-476: Is done in base ten , and the names of the cardinal numbers from 1 to 10 are cognates in most cases. The normal word order for all of the languages is subject–object–verb . Tungusic languages exhibit a complex pattern of vowel harmony , based on two parameters: vowel roundedness and vowel tenseness (in Evenki, the contrast is back and front). Tense and lax vowels do not occur in the same word; all vowels in

1691-533: Is found with any other known language. A language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as Albanian and Armenian within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate, but the meaning of the word "isolate" in such cases is usually clarified with a modifier . For instance, Albanian and Armenian may be referred to as an "Indo-European isolate". By contrast, so far as is known, the Basque language

1780-587: Is into a northern branch and a southern branch (Georg 2004) although the two branches have no clear division, and the classification of intermediate groups is debatable. Four mid-level subgroups are recognized by Hölzl (2018), namely Ewenic , Udegheic , Nanaic , and Jurchenic . Population distribution of total speakers of Tungusic languages, by speaker Alexander Vovin notes that Manchu and Jurchen are aberrant languages within South Tungusic but nevertheless still belong in it, and that this aberrancy

1869-460: Is no upper bound to the number of languages a family can contain. Some families, such as the Austronesian languages , contain over 1000. Language families can be identified from shared characteristics amongst languages. Sound changes are one of the strongest pieces of evidence that can be used to identify a genetic relationship because of their predictable and consistent nature, and through

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1958-637: Is not a measure of) a genetic relationship between the languages concerned. Linguistic interference can occur between languages that are genetically closely related, between languages that are distantly related (like English and French, which are distantly related Indo-European languages ) and between languages that have no genetic relationship. Some exceptions to the simple genetic relationship model of languages include language isolates and mixed , pidgin and creole languages . Mixed languages, pidgins and creole languages constitute special genetic types of languages. They do not descend linearly or directly from

2047-451: Is not attested by written records and so is conjectured to have been spoken before the invention of writing. A common visual representation of a language family is given by a genetic language tree. The tree model is sometimes termed a dendrogram or phylogeny . The family tree shows the relationship of the languages within a family, much as a family tree of an individual shows their relationship with their relatives. There are criticisms to

2136-541: Is one of several competing proposals, and on the other hand, some reconstruct Proto-Tungusic without RTR harmony. Some sources describe the Donghu people of 7th century BC to 2nd century BC Manchuria as Proto-Tungusic. Other sources sharply criticize this as a random similarity in pronunciation with "Tungus" that has no real basis in fact. The historical records of the Korean kingdoms of Baekje and Silla note battles with

2225-446: Is part of the larger Indo-European family, which includes many other languages native to Europe and South Asia , all believed to have descended from a common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European . A language family is usually said to contain at least two languages, although language isolates — languages that are not related to any other language — are occasionally referred to as families that contain one language. Inversely, there

2314-611: Is perhaps due to influences from the Para-Mongolic Khitan language , from Old Korean , and perhaps also from Chukotko-Kamchatkan and unknown languages of uncertain linguistic affiliation. Some linguists estimate the divergence of the Tungusic languages from a common ancestor spoken somewhere in Eastern Manchuria around 500 BC to 500 AD. (Janhunen 2012, Pevnov 2012) Other theories favor a homeland closer to Lake Baikal . ( Menges 1968, Khelimskii 1985) While

2403-422: Is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative method , a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist August Schleicher . This can demonstrate the validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families . For example, the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called Proto-Indo-European . Proto-Indo-European

2492-629: Is today considered a primary language family. Especially in the past, some linguists linked Tungusic with Turkic and Mongolic languages , among others, in either the Altaic or the Transeurasian language family. However, the proposal that there are genetic rather than merely areal links remains highly controversial. Some scholars believe that the language spoken in Europe by the Avars (who created

2581-586: The Amur honeysuckle . Four species of the Acipenseridae family can be found: the kaluga , Amur sturgeon , Sakhalin sturgeon and sterlet . The Kaluga and Amur sturgeon are endemic. The sterlet was introduced from the Ob in the 1950s. This region is home to the Kaluga fish ( Acipenseriformes ). Flowing across northeast Asia for over 4,444 kilometres (2,761 mi) (including its two tributaries), from

2670-501: The Argun , the Amur is 4,444 km (2,761 mi) long, making it the world's tenth longest river . The Amur is an important river for the aquatic fauna of Northeast Asia. The river basin is home to a variety of large predatory fish such as northern snakehead , Amur pike , taimen , Amur catfish , predatory carp and yellowcheek , as well as several species of trout and anadromous salmonids . The largest fish species in

2759-581: The Argun . The Russian proselytization of Orthodox Christianity to the indigenous peoples along the Amur was viewed as a threat by the Qing. The Amur region remained a relative backwater of the Qing Empire for the next century and a half, with Aigun being practically the only major town on the river. Russians re-appeared on the river in the mid-19th century, forcing the Manchus to yield all lands north of

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2848-508: The Avar Khaganate ) is of Tungusic origin. Language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree , or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy . Linguists thus describe

2937-607: The Dutch language a book, Noord en Oost Tartarye (literally 'North and East Tartary'). It described a variety of peoples in the Russian Far East and included some brief word lists for many languages. After his travel to Russia, his collected findings were published in three editions, 1692, 1705, and 1785. The book includes some words and sentences from the Evenki language , then called "Tungus". The German linguist Wilhelm Grube (1855–1908) published an early dictionary of

3026-692: The Han Chinese , who sometimes collectively described them as the Wild Jurchens . The Chinese-language term Yúpí Dázi 魚皮韃子 ("Fish-skin Tatars") came to apply to the Nanais and related groups as well, owing to their traditional clothes made of fish skins. The Mongols, ruling the region as the Yuan dynasty , established a tenuous military presence on the lower Amur in the 13th and 14th centuries; ruins of

3115-516: The Jurchenic languages (Jurchen, Manchu, Xibe) and the Hezhe language. Diphthongs also occur in all languages. Tungusic words have simple word codas , and usually have simple word onsets, with consonant clusters forbidden at the end of words and rare at the beginning. Below are Proto-Tungusic consonants as reconstructed by Tsintsius (1949) and the vowels according to Benzing (1955): Tungusic

3204-622: The Kangxi era of 1661–1722, they turned their attention to their north-Manchurian backyard. Aigun was re-established near the supposed Ming site in about 1683–84, and a military expeditions went upstream to dislodge the Russians, whose Albazin establishment deprived the Manchu rulers of the tribute of sable pelts that the Solons and Daurs of the area would supply otherwise. Albazin fell during

3293-605: The Mohe ( Chinese : 靺鞨 ) in Manchuria during the 1st and 2nd centuries. Some scholars suggest these Mohe are closely connected to the later Jurchens, but this is controversial. Alexander Vovin (2015) notes that Northern Tungusic languages have Eskimo–Aleut loanwords that are not found in Southern Tungusic, implying that Eskimo–Aleut was once much more widely spoken in eastern Siberia. Vovin (2015) estimates that

3382-541: The Nanai language (Gold language) in 1900, as well as deciphering the Jurchen language for modern audiences using a Chinese source. The Tungusic languages are of an agglutinative morphological type, and some of them have complex case systems and elaborate patterns of tense and aspect marking. However, none of the languages have grammatical gender or noun classes. All Tungusic languages have postpositions . Counting

3471-465: The North Germanic language family, including Danish , Swedish , Norwegian and Icelandic , which have shared descent from Ancient Norse . Latin and ancient Norse are both attested in written records, as are many intermediate stages between those ancestral languages and their modern descendants. In other cases, genetic relationships between languages are not directly attested. For instance,

3560-672: The Sino–Soviet political split of 1956–1966. For many centuries, inhabitants of the Amur Valley comprised the Tungusic ( Evenki , Solon , Ducher , Jurchen , Nanai , Ulch ), Mongol ( Daur ) people, some Ainu and, near its mouth, the Nivkhs . For many of these groups, fishing in the Amur and its tributaries was the main source of their livelihood. Until the 17th century these peoples were not known to Europeans, and little known to

3649-486: The Yakuts ("tongus"). Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics. Some scholars have criticized the tree-based model of Tungusic classification and argue that the long history of contact among the Tungusic languages makes them better treated as a dialect continuum . The main classification

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3738-576: The arroyo of Mutnaya Protoka, and the water will meet the Argun River (Ergune) after about 30 kilometres (19 mi). The Amur Basin of the Kherlen − Argun −Amur River system has a total length of 5,052 km (3,139 mi) to its river mouth on the Sea of Okhotsk . The largest tributaries of the Amur are, from source to mouth: There are also numerous lakes in the floodplain of the Amur. Some of

3827-674: The comparative method can be used to reconstruct proto-languages. However, languages can also change through language contact which can falsely suggest genetic relationships. For example, the Mongolic , Tungusic , and Turkic languages share a great deal of similarities that lead several scholars to believe they were related . These supposed relationships were later discovered to be derived through language contact and thus they are not truly related. Eventually though, high amounts of language contact and inconsistent changes will render it essentially impossible to derive any more relationships; even

3916-489: The comparative method of linguistic analysis. In order to test the hypothesis that two languages are related, the comparative method begins with the collection of pairs of words that are hypothesized to be cognates : i.e., words in related languages that are derived from the same word in the shared ancestral language. Pairs of words that have similar pronunciations and meanings in the two languages are often good candidates for hypothetical cognates. The researcher must rule out

4005-638: The daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related . The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time. One well-known example of a language family is the Romance languages , including Spanish , French , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , Catalan , and many others, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin . The Romance family itself

4094-526: The mountains of northeastern China to the Sea of Okhotsk (near Nikolayevsk-na-Amure ), it drains a remarkable watershed that includes diverse landscapes of desert , steppe , tundra , and taiga , eventually emptying into the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Tartary, where the mouth of the river faces the northern end of the island of Sakhalin . The Amur has always been closely associated with

4183-605: The Amur in writings about his journey to Sakhalin Island in 1890. The average annual discharge varies from 6,000 cubic metres per second (210,000 cu ft/s) (1980) to 12,000 cubic metres per second (420,000 cu ft/s) (1957), leading to an average 9,819 cubic metres per second (346,800 cu ft/s) or 310 cubic kilometres (74 cu mi) per year. The maximum runoff measured occurred in Oct 1951 with 30,700 cubic metres per second (1,080,000 cu ft/s) whereas

4272-522: The Amur is the kaluga , a sturgeon that is one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, attaining a length as great as 5.6 m (18 ft). It is also home to the northernmost populations of the Amur softshell turtle and Indian lotus . The Russian name Amur may come from the Tungusic term for “river”. Tungusic peoples are an ethno-linguistic group formed by the speakers of Tungusic languages (or Manchu–Tungus languages). They are native to Siberia and Northeast Asia . The etymology of

4361-766: The Amur will connect Tongjiang with Nizhneleninskoye , a village in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast . The Chinese portion of the bridge was finished in July 2016. In December 2016, work began on the Russian portion of the bridge. Completion of structural link between the two sides of the bridge was completed in March 2019. Opening to rail traffic has been repeatedly delayed, with the December 2019 estimate being "the end of 2020", and then 3rd quarter of 2021. It

4450-810: The Eskimo–Aleut loanwords in Northern Tungusic had been borrowed no more than 2,000 years ago, which was when Tungusic was spreading northwards from its homeland in the middle reaches of the Amur River . Wang and Robbeets (2020) place the Proto-Tungusic homeland in the Lake Khanka region. Liu et al. (2020) revealed that Haplogroup C-F5484 and its subclades are the genetic markers of Tungusic-speaking peoples. C-F5484 emerged 3,300 years ago and began to diverge 1,900 years ago, indicating

4539-630: The Romance languages and the North Germanic languages are also related to each other, being subfamilies of the Indo-European language family , since both Latin and Old Norse are believed to be descended from an even more ancient language, Proto-Indo-European ; however, no direct evidence of Proto-Indo-European or its divergence into its descendant languages survives. In cases such as these, genetic relationships are established through use of

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4628-521: The Udeghes, Ulchis, and Nanais. Russian Cossack expeditions led by Vassili Poyarkov and Yerofey Khabarov explored the Amur and its tributaries in 1643–44 and 1649–51, respectively. The Cossacks established the fort of Albazin on the upper Amur, at the site of the former capital of the Solons . At the time, the Manchus were busy with conquering China ; but a few decades later, during

4717-558: The approximate age of differentiation of Tungusic languages. The earliest written attestation of the language family is in the Jurchen language , which was spoken by the rulers of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) . The Jurchens invented a Jurchen script to write their language based on the Khitan scripts . During this time, several stelae were put up in Manchuria and Korea. One of these, among

4806-685: The cities of Blagoveshchensk in Russia and Heihe in China, it widens significantly as it is joined by one of its most important tributaries the Zeya . The Amur arcs to the east and turns southeast again at the confluence with the Bureya , then does not receive another significant tributary for nearly 250 kilometres (160 mi) before its confluence with its largest tributary, the Songhua , at Tongjiang . At

4895-496: The common ancestor of the Germanic subfamily, was itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European , the common ancestor of the Indo-European family. Within a large family, subfamilies can be identified through "shared innovations": members of a subfamily will share features that represent retentions from their more recent common ancestor, but were not present in the overall proto-language of the larger family. Some taxonomists restrict

4984-499: The confluence of its two major affluents, the Shilka and the Argun (or Ergune) , at an elevation of 303 metres (994 ft). It flows east forming the border between China and Russia, and slowly makes a great arc to the southeast for about 400 kilometres (250 mi), receiving many tributaries and passing many small towns. At Huma, it is joined by a major tributary, the Huma He . Afterwards it continues to flow south until, between

5073-567: The confluence with the Songhua the river turns northeast, now flowing towards Khabarovsk , where it joins the Ussuri and ceases to define the Russia–China border. Now the river spreads out dramatically into a braided character, flowing north-northeast through a wide valley in eastern Russia, passing Amursk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur . The valley narrows after about 200 kilometres (120 mi) and

5162-427: The early 1430s, re-building (twice) the Yongning Temple and obtaining at least the nominal allegiance of the lower Amur's tribes to the Ming government. Some sources report also a Chinese presence during the same period on the middle Amur – a fort existed at Aigun for about 20 years during the Yongle era on the left (northwestern) shore of the Amur downstream from the mouth of the Zeya River. This Ming Dynasty Aigun

5251-509: The family tree model. Critics focus mainly on the claim that the internal structure of the trees is subject to variation based on the criteria of classification. Even among those who support the family tree model, there are debates over which languages should be included in a language family. For example, within the dubious Altaic language family , there are debates over whether the Japonic and Koreanic languages should be included or not. The wave model has been proposed as an alternative to

5340-415: The family. The largest five language families in terms of number of speakers (Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo and Austronesian) make up five-sixths (almost 83.3%) of the world’s population. Two languages have a genetic relationship , and belong to the same language family, if both are descended from a common ancestor through the process of language change , or one is descended from

5429-415: The family. Thus, the term family is analogous to the biological term clade . Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, sometimes referred to as "branches" or "subfamilies" of the family; for instance, the Germanic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European family. Subfamilies share a more recent common ancestor than the common ancestor of the larger family; Proto-Germanic ,

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5518-495: The following families that contain at least 1% of the 7,164 known languages in the world: Glottolog 5.0 (2024) lists the following as the largest families, of 7,788 languages (other than sign languages , pidgins , and unclassifiable languages ): Language counts can vary significantly depending on what is considered a dialect; for example Lyle Campbell counts only 27 Otomanguean languages, although he, Ethnologue and Glottolog also disagree as to which languages belong in

5607-416: The form of dialect continua in which there are no clear-cut borders that make it possible to unequivocally identify, define, or count individual languages within the family. However, when the differences between the speech of different regions at the extremes of the continuum are so great that there is no mutual intelligibility between them, as occurs in Arabic , the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as

5696-472: The general form of the protolanguage is clear from the similarities in the daughter languages, there is no consensus on detailed reconstructions. As of 2012, scholars are still trying to establish a shared vocabulary to do such a reconstruction. The Lake Khanka region was found to present the most likely homeland, based on linguistic and ancient genetic data. There are some proposed sound correspondences for Tungusic languages. For example, Norman (1977) supports

5785-503: The global scale, the site Glottolog counts a total of 423 language families in the world, including 184 isolates. One controversial theory concerning the genetic relationships among languages is monogenesis , the idea that all known languages, with the exceptions of creoles , pidgins and sign languages , are descendant from a single ancestral language. If that is true, it would mean all languages (other than pidgins, creoles, and sign languages) are genetically related, but in many cases,

5874-406: The historical record again after the unification of the Jurchen tribes under Nurhaci , who ruled 1616–1626. He commissioned a new Manchu alphabet based on the Mongolian alphabet, and his successors went on to found the Qing dynasty . In 1636, Emperor Hong Taiji decreed that the ethnonym "Manchu" would replace "Jurchen". Modern scholarship usually treats Jurchen and Manchu as different stages of

5963-446: The island of Sakhalin at its mouth, and most names for the island, even in the languages of the indigenous peoples of the region, are derived from the name of the river: "Sakhalin" derives from a Tungusic dialectal form cognate with Manchu sahaliyan ("black", as in sahaliyan ula , "Black River"), while Ainu and Japanese "Karaputo" or " Karafuto " is derived from the Ainu name of the Amur or its mouth. Anton Chekhov vividly described

6052-480: The language family concept. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages ( Latin , Oscan , Umbrian , etc.) might well be " areal features ". However, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since English and continental West Germanic were not

6141-448: The largest ones are Bolon , Khummi and Udyl . The main tributaries from the mouth: tributary tributary (km) (km ) (m /s) Amur– Shilka – Onon : 4,354 km; Amur– Argun – Hailar –Dayan: 4,444 km; Amur–Argun– Dalan Orom – Kherlen : 5,052 km; Many historical references distinguish two geopolitical entities in the area of the Amur: Manchuria ( Northeast China ) and Outer Manchuria . The Chinese province of Heilongjiang on

6230-444: The latter case, Basque and Aquitanian would form a small family together. Ancestors are not considered to be distinct members of a family. A proto-language can be thought of as a mother language (not to be confused with a mother tongue ) being the root from which all languages in the family stem. The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly since most languages have a relatively short recorded history. However, it

6319-408: The latter name, meaning "black water", being the basis of the modern Chinese name Heilongjiang or " Black Dragon River", while the Manchurian name Sahaliyan Ula , the Mongolian names "Amar mörön" (Cyrillic: Амар мөрөн) originates from the name "Amar" meaning to rest and Khar mörön (Cyrillic: Хар мөрөн) mean Black River. The river rises in the hills in the western part of Northeast China at

6408-587: The most important extant texts in Jurchen, is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" ( Da Jin deshengtuo songbei ), which was erected in 1185, during the Dading period (1161–1189). It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele. The last known example of the Jurchen script was written in 1526. The Tungusic languages appear in

6497-567: The name Amur is unknown. One theory dictates that it comes to Russian through either the Evenki word amur or the Even word amar , both meaning "river" in their respective Tungusic languages. However, it is unclear whether Russian borrowed the name Amur from either Tungusic language rather than the other way around. An alternative theory suggests that Amur comes from the Mongolic language Dagur's , word for "big river," mur . Its ancient Chinese names were Yushui , Wanshui and Heishui , with

6586-423: The oldest demonstrable language family, Afroasiatic , is far younger than language itself. Estimates of the number of language families in the world may vary widely. According to Ethnologue there are 7,151 living human languages distributed in 142 different language families. Lyle Campbell (2019) identifies a total of 406 independent language families, including isolates. Ethnologue 27 (2024) lists

6675-594: The other language. Amur River The Amur River ( Russian : река Амур ) or Heilong River ( Chinese : 黑龙江 ) is a perennial river in Northeast Asia , forming the natural border between the Russian Far East and Northeast China (historically the Outer and Inner Manchuria ). The Amur proper is 2,824 km (1,755 mi) long, and has a drainage basin of 1,855,000 km (716,000 sq mi). If including its main stem tributary ,

6764-454: The other. The term and the process of language evolution are independent of, and not reliant on, the terminology, understanding, and theories related to genetics in the biological sense, so, to avoid confusion, some linguists prefer the term genealogical relationship . There is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of

6853-470: The possibility that the two words are similar merely due to chance, or due to one having borrowed the words from the other (or from a language related to the other). Chance resemblance is ruled out by the existence of large collections of pairs of words between the two languages showing similar patterns of phonetic similarity. Once coincidental similarity and borrowing have been eliminated as possible explanations for similarities in sound and meaning of words,

6942-653: The purposes of interactions between two groups who speak different languages. Languages that arise in order for two groups to communicate with each other to engage in commercial trade or that appeared as a result of colonialism are called pidgin . Pidgins are an example of linguistic and cultural expansion caused by language contact. However, language contact can also lead to cultural divisions. In some cases, two different language speaking groups can feel territorial towards their language and do not want any changes to be made to it. This causes language boundaries and groups in contact are not willing to make any compromises to accommodate

7031-536: The putative phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically (by ancestry) as opposed to horizontally (by spatial diffusion). In some cases, the shared derivation of a group of related languages from a common ancestor is directly attested in the historical record. For example, this is the case for the Romance language family , wherein Spanish , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , and French are all descended from Latin, as well as for

7120-413: The relationships may be too remote to be detectable. Alternative explanations for some basic observed commonalities between languages include developmental theories, related to the biological development of the capacity for language as the child grows from newborn. A language family is a monophyletic unit; all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all descendants of that ancestor are included in

7209-570: The remaining explanation is common origin: it is inferred that the similarities occurred due to descent from a common ancestor, and the words are actually cognates, implying the languages must be related. When languages are in contact with one another , either of them may influence the other through linguistic interference such as borrowing. For example, French has influenced English , Arabic has influenced Persian , Sanskrit has influenced Tamil , and Chinese has influenced Japanese in this way. However, such influence does not constitute (and

7298-590: The river again flows north onto plains at the confluence with the Amgun . Shortly after, the Amur turns sharply east and into an estuary at Nikolayevsk-on-Amur , about 20 kilometres (12 mi) downstream of which it flows into the Strait of Tartary . During years with heavy precipitation, the Amur river system is connected with the Kherlen river. The normally exit−less endorheic lake Hulun Lake , into which Kherlen flows, will overflow at its northern shore through

7387-477: The river ice. In 1941 a railway tunnel was added as well. Later, a combined road and rail bridge over the Amur at Komsomolsk-on-Amur (1975; 1400 m) and the road and rail Khabarovsk Bridge (1999; 3890 m) were constructed. The Tongjiang-Nizhneleninskoye railway bridge was proposed in 2007 by Valery Solomonovich Gurevich , the vice-chairman of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia . The railway bridge over

7476-776: The river to the Russian Empire by the Treaty of Aigun (1858). Lands east of the Ussuri and the lower Amur were acquired by Russia as well, by the Convention of Peking (1860). The first permanent bridge across the Amur, the Khabarovsk Bridge with an overall length of 2,590 metres (8,500 ft), was completed in 1916, allowing the trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway to cross the river year-round without using ferries or rail tracks on top of

7565-546: The same language. Currently, Manchu proper is a dying language spoken by a dozen or so elderly people in Qiqihar , China. However, the closely related Xibe language spoken in Xinjiang , which historically was treated as a divergent dialect of Jurchen-Manchu, maintains the literary tradition of the script, and has around 30,000 speakers. As the only language in the Tungusic family with a long written tradition, Jurchen-Manchu

7654-472: The south bank of the river takes its name from the river, as does the Russian Amur Oblast on the north bank. The native Manchu people and their Qing Empire of China, who regarded this river as sacred, use the name Sahaliyan Ula (Black River). The Amur is an important symbol of, and geopolitical factor in, Chinese–Russian relations . The Amur became especially prominent in the period of

7743-426: The term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus on how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups , and groups into complexes . A top-level (i.e., the largest) family is often called a phylum or stock . The closer the branches are to each other, the more closely the languages will be related. This means if a branch of a proto-language is four branches down and there

7832-502: The tree model. The wave model uses isoglosses to group language varieties; unlike in the tree model, these groups can overlap. While the tree model implies a lack of contact between languages after derivation from an ancestral form, the wave model emphasizes the relationship between languages that remain in contact, which is more realistic. Historical glottometry is an application of the wave model, meant to identify and evaluate genetic relations in linguistic linkages . A sprachbund

7921-717: Was located on the opposite bank to the later Aigun that was later relocated during the Qing Dynasty . In any event, the Ming presence on the Amur was as short-lived as it was tenuous; soon after the end of the Yongle era, the Ming dynasty's frontiers retreated to southern Manchuria. Chinese cultural and religious influence such as Chinese New Year, the "Chinese god", Chinese motifs like the dragon, spirals, scrolls, and material goods like agriculture, husbandry, heating, iron cooking-pots, silk, and cotton spread among Amur natives such as

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