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Tungusic is a family of languages spoken primarily across northeastern Asia, including parts of Russia, China, and Mongolia, with the most widely spoken being Evenki. These languages matter because they represent distinct linguistic traditions of indigenous peoples in the region and provide important insights into the linguistic and cultural diversity of Asia.
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The Tungusic languages (/tʊŋˈɡʊsɪk/; also known as Manchu–Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in eastern Siberia and northern China by Tungusic peoples. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the dozen living languages of the Tungusic language family. Today, the most spoken language in the family is Xibe, a southern Tungusic language spoken by a group that migrated from Manchuria to Xinjiang in the 18th century. It is followed by the northern Tungusic languages Evenki, spoken in Northeast China and the Russian Far East, and Even, in northeastern Siberia. Many Tungusic languages are critically endangered, including Manchu, the most historically influential of this family and an official language of the Qing Empire. The term "Tungusic" is from an exonym for the Evenk people (Ewenki) used by the Yakuts ("tongus").
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