Southern Altai language
| Southern Altai | |
|---|---|
| Oirot, Oyrot (before 1948) | |
| тÿштÿк алтай тил, tüştük altay til | |
Cyrillic and Latin scripts | |
| Native to | Russia |
| Region | Altai Republic |
Native speakers | 68,700 (2020)[1] |
| Cyrillic | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | alt |
| ISO 639-3 | alt |
| Glottolog | sout2694 |
| ELP | Southern Altai |
Southern Altai (also known as Oirot, Oyrot, Altai and Altai proper) is a Turkic language spoken in the Altai Republic, a federal subject of Russia located in Southern Siberia on the border with Mongolia and China. The language has some mutual intelligibility with the Northern Altai language, leading to the two being traditionally considered as a single language. According to modern classifications—at least since the middle of the 20th century—they are considered to be two separate languages.[5]
Written Altai is based on Southern Altai. According to some reports, however, it is rejected by Northern Altai children. Dialects include Altai Proper and Talangit.[6]
Classification
Southern Altai is a member of the Turkic language family. Within this family, there have been various attempts to classify Altai, and not all of them agree as to its position as it has a number of ambiguous characteristics.
Geographic distribution
Southern Altai is primarily spoken in the Altai Republic, where it has official status alongside Russian.
Dialects
Baskakov identifies three dialects of Southern Altai, some of which have distinctive sub-varieties:[2]
- Altai
- Maima (sub-variety)
- Telengit
- Telengit-Teles
- Chui
- Teleut
Some sources consider Telengit and Teleut to be distinct languages.[9][10]
Phonology
Southern Altai has 8 vowels, which may be long or short, and 20 consonants, plus marginal consonants that occur only in loan words.[11]
Vowels
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i y | ɯ u |
| Low | e ø | a o |
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-alveloar | Velar | Uvular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p b | d
|
tʃ ɟ | k ɡ | q |
| Affricate | (ts) | ||||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | (x) ɣ | |
| Nasal | m | n
|
ŋ | ||
| Trill | r
|
||||
| Approximant | l
|
j | |||
Phonemes in parentheses occur only in Russian loanwords.
Writing system
Southern Altai employs a version of the Cyrillic alphabet with additional characters to represent sounds not found in Russian.[12]
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Д д | Ј ј | Е е |
| Ё ё | Ж ж | З з | И и | Й й | К к | Л л |
| М м | Н н | Ҥ ҥ | О о | Ӧ ӧ | П п | Р р |
| С с | Т т | У у | Ӱ ӱ | Ф ф | Х х | Ц ц |
| Ч ч | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ | Ы ы | Ь ь | Э э |
References
- Russian Federal State Statistics Service. 2010. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
- ^ ISSN 0001-6446.
- ^ a b Kormushin, I. V. (2018). "Алтайский язык" [Altai language]. Большая российская энциклопедия/Great Russian Encyclopedia Online (in Russian).
- S2CID 64344619.
- ^ Nikolay Baskakov (1958). The Altai language. Moscow: Nauka.
- ^ Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- ^ Schönig, Claus (1997). "A new attempt to classify the Turkic languages (1)". Turkic Languages. 1: 117–133.
- ^ Schönig, Claus (2007). "Some notes on Modern Kipchak Turkic (Part 1)". Ural-altaische Jahrbücher. 21: 170–202.
- ^ "Telengitsky yazyk | Malye yazyki Rossii" Теленгитский язык | Малые языки России [Telengit language | Minor languages of Russia]. minlang.iling-ran.ru. Retrieved 2023-05-23.
- ^ "Teleutsky yazyk | Malye yazyki Rossii" Телеутский язык | Малые языки России [Teleut language | Minor languages of Russia]. minlang.iling-ran.ru. Retrieved 2023-05-23.
- OCLC 42579926.
- ISBN 978-5-903693-23-8.
External links
