Nivkh (also called Gilyak) is an isolated language spoken by the people of Nivkh, who live on the island of Sakhalin and in the lower reaches of the Amur River in the Russian Far East. The language has four dialects and the major discrepancy is between the Amur dialect, spoken in the Amur area on the continent and the west coast of north Sakhalin, and the Sakhalin dialect spoken in the east coast of Sakhalin. Nivkh is listed in the UNESCO Red Book on endangered languages as being seriously endangered. According to the census of 1989, the percentage of speakers is 23, 3% of the total population of 4,681.33 This article concerns the phonology of the Amur dialect spoken by the continental Nivkh. All the examples are from the following sources, unless otherwise mentioned: Krejnovich (1937), and Saveleva and Taksami (1970).
