Proto-Eskimo–Aleut was the common ancestor of the Eskimo languages and Aleut

Aleut language

Aleut is a language of the Eskimo–Aleut language family. It is the heritage language of the Aleut people living in the Aleutian Islands, Pribilof Islands, and Commander Islands. As of 2007 there were about 150 speakers of Aleut .- Dialects :Aleut is alone with the Eskimo languages in the...

. Its existence is known through similarities in Eskimo and Aleut. The existence of Proto-Eskimo–Aleut is generally accepted among linguists

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

. It was for a long time true that no linguistic reconstruction

Linguistic reconstruction

Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction. Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language...

 of Proto-Eskimo–Aleut had yet been produced, as stated by Bomhard

Allan R. Bomhard

Allan R. Bomhard is an American linguist.He was educated at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hunter College, and the City University of New York, and served in the U.S. Army from 1964—1966. He currently resides in Charleston, SC...

 (2008:209). Such a reconstruction was offered by Knut Bergsland

Knut Bergsland

Knut Bergsland was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor at the University of Oslo from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic and Eskimo–Aleut languages.-Career:...

 in 1986. Michael Fortescue

Michael Fortescue

Michael David Fortescue is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. He is professor of General Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen and chairman of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen...

 (1998:124-125) has offered another version of this system, largely based on the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo

Proto-Eskimo language

Proto-Eskimo was the ancestor of all the Eskimo languages. A reconstruction of the Proto-Eskimo sound system can be found in Fortescue et al. 1994:xi.- References :...

 in the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary he co-authored with Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan (1994:xi).

Possible relation to other language families

There are no generally accepted relations between Proto-Eskimo–Aleut and other language families. A substantial case for a genetic relationship

Genetic relationship

In linguistics, genetic relationship is the usual term for the relationship which exists between languages that are members of the same language family. The term genealogical relationship is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the unrelated use of the term in biological genetics...

 between Proto-Eskimo–Aleut and several languages of northern Eurasia

Eurasia

Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...

 was published by Michael Fortescue

Michael Fortescue

Michael David Fortescue is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. He is professor of General Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen and chairman of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen...

 in 1998 in Language Relations across Bering Strait (see Uralo-Siberian languages

Uralo-Siberian languages

Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Eskimo–Aleut. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskimo–Aleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait...

).