Uralic–Yukaghir languages Uralic–Yukaghir languages Uralic–Yukaghir is a proposed language family composed of Uralic and Yukaghir. It is also known as Uralo-Yukaghir. Uralic is a large and diverse family of languages spoken in northern and eastern Europe and northwestern Siberia. Among the better-known Uralic languages are Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian. Yukaghir is a small family of languages spoken in eastern Siberia. It formerly extended over a much wider area (Collinder 1965:30). It consists of two languages, Tundra Yukaghir and Kolyma Yukaghir. The idea that the Uralic and Yukaghir languages are related is not new. It was advanced in passing by Holger Pedersen in
Uralic–Yukaghir languages World's Languages" by Merritt Ruhlen (1987). Uralic and Yukaghir are listed as a language family, forming a subgroup of a higher-order family called "Eurasiatic", in Joseph Greenberg's "Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives" (2000–2002). However, Greenberg did not present a discursive argument for this subgroup, presumably leaving it to the reader to work it out from the data on grammar and vocabulary he presented. The Uralic–Yukaghir family has been accepted by the American Nostraticist Allan Bomhard (2008:176, citing Ruhlen 1987:64–65) but without presenting any argument for it, and Russian linguist Vladimir Napolskikh. Collinder summarizes his case for, not merely a relationship