family of Native American languages consisting of Aleut (spoken on the Aleutian Islands and the Kodiak Peninsula) and Eskimo or Inuktitut (spoken in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia).
Eskimo and Aleut have enough similarities to justify the theory that they are descendants of a single ancestor language.
Since the 18th cent., however, the Eskimos of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska have used an adaptation of the Roman alphabet, introduced by missionaries.
Eskimo or Esquimau is a term used for a group of people who inhabit the circumpolar region (excluding circumpolar Scandinavia and all but the easternmost portions of Russia).
There are two main groups of Eskimos: the Inuit of northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland and the Yupik of western Alaska and the Russian Far East (the latter group is known as Siberian Yupik or Yuit).
The Eskimos are related to the Aleuts and the Alutiiq from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska as well as the Sug'piak from the Kodiak Islands and as far as the Prince William Sound in South Central Alaska.
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