Station: [64] The Nivkh Language

Feel free to take a seat and listen to the language of the Nivkh in Eastern Siberia. The most important means of subsistence for the Nivkh is fishing, although some also keep reindeer these days.

"Nivkh" means "we" or "related person". Some 5,000 people, maybe even less, speak this Paleo-Siberian language, an isolated idiom unrelated to any other languages in Siberia. It’s thought there may be some links to languages on the northwest coast of North America, among others. The language is extraordinary – and this is what it sounds like:

And that brings us to the end of our tour of the Natural History Museum’s Ethnology Department. But if you’d like to make your way upstairs, you’ll find many more treasures on the first floor – from the fields of geology, cave research (or speleology), and archaeology. Not to mention the excavation finds from the desert city of Petra in present-day Jordan. Be sure not to miss those. We’ll meet you again on the upper floor!

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Quelle des Klangbeispiels: Hidetoshi, Shiraishi und Lok, Galina, Soundmaterials of the Nivkh Language 5, Sapporo 2008

Wir danken Shiraishi Hidetoshi für die Nutzungsgenehmigung der Tondokumente.