Chukotkan languages


Chukotkan is a dialect cluster that forms one branch of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family. It is spoken in two autonomous regions at the extreme northeast of Russia, bounded on the east by the Pacific and on the north by the Arctic.
The term Luorawetlan, used for Chukchi in the 1930s, is actually the ethnonym of both the Chukchi and Koryak.

Varieties

Traditionally, Chukotkan was considered two languages, Chukchi and Koryak, due to a sharp ethnic division between the Chukchi and Koryak people. However, the Kerek and Alyutor dialects, spoken by ethnic Chukchi and Koryak, are as different from those varieties as they are from each other. Thus Chukotkan is currently generally classified as four languages, but it could as easily be considered one language with significant dialectical variation.