Manchu/Information on Tungusic Languages

Introduction
The Manchu Tungusic language family consists of roughly 12 different languages that are spoken in a large geographical area stretching from Heilongjiang province and Inner Mongolia (both located in North East China) in the south, all the way through to the Arctic ocean in the north; from Sakhalin island, and the Kamchatka peninsula in the east, to the Yenisei river in the west. There are also several thousand speakers of a Manchu Tungusic language in Cabcal Sibe Autonomous County (察布查尔錫伯自治县) in North West China. Although speakers of Manchu Tungusic languages are spread over a huge geographical area, the actual number of people who speak one of the languages is less than 100,000.

Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics. One classification which seems favoured over other alternatives is that the Tungusic languages can be divided into a northern branch and a southern branch, with the southern branch further subdivided into southeastern and southwestern groups.


 * Note 1: Figures for Russia are based on 2002 census figures
 * Note 2: Figures for China are based on the 2001 census figures
 * Note 3: Figures for number of speakers were taken from ethnologue and are therefore generally quite dated.
 * Note 4: Only officially recognised ethnic groups and languages included.