Even

Even, historically called Lamut after the Yakut word lamu for the Okhotsk Sea, is a Tungusic language and the closest relative of Evenki, from which it split gradually; the two remained barely distinct as late as the 1800s. It is the tongue of nomadic reindeer herders scattered across the far northeast of Siberia, from the Lena to Kamchatka and the Okhotsk coast.

When Russian Cossacks reached the Pacific in the 1600s, its speakers included the Okhotsk reindeer Tungus and the settled Arman group, whose divergent speech stood closer to being a language of its own.

Even is an agglutinative language with a vocabulary rich in terms for herding and seasonal migration, and it stayed purely oral throughout this period. From the 1800s the Evens were counted as Orthodox Christians while keeping older shamanic practices.