Editing Nivkh languages (section)

==Languages==
Nivkh is a [[dialect continuum]]. There is a high degree of variability of usage among Nivkhs depending on village, clan, and even the individual speaker. Varieties are traditionally grouped into four geographic clusters. These are the lower-Amur variety, the North Sakhalin variety (spoken on the coasts around the [[Amur Liman]], including the mainland and west Sakhalin), the East Sakhalin variety (including populations around the [[Tym (Sakhalin)|Tym River]]), and the South Sakhalin variety (spoken around the [[Poronay River]]). The lexical and phonological differences across these varieties is great enough that specialists describe them as falling into two or three languages, though for purposes of language revival among a small and already divided population, Nivkh is generally presented as a single language, due to fears of the consequences of further division.

Gruzdeva (1998) notes that speakers of East Sakhalin and the lower Amur cannot understand each other, and divides the varieties into two languages, '''Nivkh proper''' (including the lower Amur, Northern Sakhalin / Straits and Western Sakhalin varieties) and '''Nighvng''' (the East and South Sakhalin varieties). Fortescue (2016)<ref name="Fortescue2016">{{Cite book |last=Fortescue |first=Michael D. |author-link=Michael Fortescue| title=Comparative Nivkh Dictionary |date=2016 |publisher=Lincom Europa |isbn=978-3-86288-687-6 |location=Munich |language=en}}</ref> notes that the Amur, East Sakhalin and South Sakhalin varieties have low intelligibility with each other, and considers each of them to constitute a separate language.