ABSTRACT

Nivkh presents an interesting case, suggests that 'writing' is a more complex variable than is often assumed in sociolinguistic work. Nivkh is a linguistic isolate spoken in the lower reaches of the Amur River and on the northern part of the island of Sakhalin, in the Russian Far East. Most of the research on Nivkh that is sociolinguistically relevant is based on demographic data supplied by the national census. The first attempts to introduce a writing system for Nivkh were undertaken in the early stages of the post-revolutionary period. Nivkh case focuses that a severely endangered language can produce a high number of vernacular publications. Nivkh was one of the nine minority languages of the 'Peoples of the North' for which the korenizatsiia policy was first put into practice. The Nivkh publications on educational support and documentations of linguistic and cultural aspects heavily outweigh those in other genres.