יופיק סיבירי מרכזי

Central Siberian Yupik (Юпик ситвэлкэн Yupik sityelken) is the language spoken on Saint Lawrence Island (USA) and the Chukchi Peninsula (Russia), occupying the Bering Strait between the two countries. It belongs to the Yupik branch of Eskimo-Aleut, distinct from Central Alaskan Yupʼik (esu) and Inuit varieties (Inupiaq ipk, Inuktitut iu, Greenlandic kl). The Saint Lawrence Island Yupik community of Gambell and Savoonga has maintained the language under Alaska's bilingual education programs since the 1970s. Russian-side speakers in Provideniya are more pressured by Russian. Linguistically, the language has classic Eskimo-Aleut features: agglutinative polysynthesis with up to 100+ derivational suffixes per word, ergative-absolutive alignment, and dual + plural number distinctions.