Daria Egereva … member of the Selkup indigenous group
She’s the only one still in jail from a widespread series of arrests of indigenous activists 6 months ago.
The Selkup speak a Uralic language of the Samoyedic branch. We’re most familiar with the Finno-Ugric branch of Uralic - Finnish, Estonian & Hungarian - the largest non-Indo-European languages in Europe. The homeland of Uralic languages is in Siberia though, where there is a rich diversity of Uralic languages. Uralic languages probably expanded with master bronze-crafters associated with Seima-Turbino complex of bronze weapons, a style we see from China to Finland.
The first wave of Russia’s eastward expansion, and then especially Stalinism were devastating to the stunning linguistic and cultural diversity of Siberia. Uralic, Turkic, Tungusic (related to northern China’s Manchu of Qing Dynasty fame), even Eskimo languages, plus the fascinating wealth of Paleo-Siberian languages - completely unrelated language families like Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh, Yukaghir, and the fascinating Yeneseian, which has influenced almost all the others, is preserved in ancient chinese sources and is now a single language with maybe 10-100 speakers. Oh and it’s almost certainly a distant relative of Navajo! For real!
19thC imperialism and then Stalin’s Russianization policies left most of these languages extinct, moribund or critically endangered. There is a good chance that Putin’s policies will snuff out most of what’s left.
Great comment. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Great and informative comment. I’m far from an expert in the subject but it was my understanding a current theory is that the language “comes” from Siberia, but that it is not completely accepted. Am I wrong?
Wait which language? The Urheimat of Uralic languages definitely looks to be the ural mountains region that is taken as the western edge of siberia. As with genetics, the area of greatest diversity is almost always the origin point. That doesn’t always hold, and mountains tend to preserve diversity, but it’s definitely the only strong contender.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be unclear. My comment formed in the beginning of the original comment. I was regering to Finno-Ugric.
Oh! Yeah finno-ugric as a seperate branch probably developed west of siberia.
But rooted I Siberia or not. Related to Korean or not. Now I’m just curious about your oppinon. :)
Another day of propaganda from TheGuardian. Where is the journalism?
For you? RT, I’m guessing.
