Sakha language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sakha | ||
|---|---|---|
| Саха тыла Sakha tyla | ||
| Spoken in | Russia | |
| Region | Sakha | |
| Total speakers | 456,288 (2002 census)[1] | |
| Language family | Altaic[2] (controversial)
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| Writing system | Cyrillic alphabet | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | Sakha Republic | |
| Regulated by | No official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | sah | |
| ISO 639-3 | sah | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language with around 460,000 speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Sakha or Yakuts.
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[edit] Classification
Sakha is a member of the Northern Turkic family of languages, which includes Shor, Tuvan, and Dolgan in addition to Sakha. The Northern Turkic family is a subgroup of the Turkic languages, which some linguists believe to be member of the disputed Altaic language family. [3]
Like Hungarian, Finnish, and Turkish, Sakha has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually Subject Object Verb.
[edit] Geographic distribution
Sakha is spoken mainly in the Sakha Republic. It is also used by ethnic Sakha in Khabarovsk Region and a small diaspora in other parts of the Russian Federation, Turkey, and other parts of the world. Dolgan, a close relative of Sakha, considered by some a dialect, is spoken by Dolgans in Krasnoyarsk Region. Sakha is widely used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic - more Dolgans, Evenks, Evens and Yukagirs speak Yakut than their own languages. About 8% of the people of other ethnicities than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of Yakut language during the 2002 census.[4]
[edit] Sounds
One characteristic feature of Sakha is vowel harmony. For example, if the first vowel of a Sakha word is a front vowel, the second and other vowels of the same word are usually the same vowel or another front vowel: кэлин (kelin) "back": э (e) is open unrounded front, и (i) is close unrounded front.
[edit] Consonants
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | c | ɟ | k | ɡ | ||||
| Fricative | s | x | ɣ | h | ||||||||
| Approximant | l | j, ȷ̃ | ||||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||||||
[edit] Vowels
| Short | Long | Diphthong | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Open | Close | Open | |||
| Front | Unrounded | i | e | iː | eː | ie |
| Rounded | y | ø | yː | øː | yø | |
| Back | Unrounded | ɯ | a | ɯː | aː | ɯa |
| Rounded | u | o | uː | oː | uo | |
[edit] Writing system
Sakha is written using the Cyrillic script: the modern Sakha alphabet, established in 1939 by the Soviet Union, consists of the usual Russian characters but with 5 additional letters: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү.
Сахалыы сурук-бичигэ (Sakha alphabet)
| Letter | Name | IPA | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| А а | а | /a/ | |
| Б б | бэ | /b/ | |
| В в | вэ | /v/ | found only in Russian loanwords [3] |
| Г г | гэ | /ɡ/ | |
| Ҕ ҕ | ҕэ | /ɣ, ʁ/ | |
| Д д | дэ | /d/ | |
| Дь дь | дьэ | /ɟ/ | |
| Е е | е | /e, je/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ё ё | ё | /jo/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ж ж | жэ | /ʒ/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| З з | зэ | /z/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| И и | и | /i/ | |
| Й й | йот | /j, ȷ̃/ | Nasalization of the glide is not indicated in the orthography |
| К к | ка | /k, q/ | |
| Л л | эл | /l/ | |
| М м | эм | /m/ | |
| Н н | эн | /n/ | |
| Ҥ ҥ | эҥ | /ŋ/ | |
| Нь нь | эньэ | /ɲ/ | |
| О о | о | /o/ | |
| Ө ө | ө | /ø/ | |
| П п | пэ | /p/ | |
| Р р | эр | /ɾ/ | |
| С с | эс | /s/ | |
| Һ һ | һэ | /h/ | |
| Т т | тэ | /t/ | |
| У у | у | /u/ | |
| Ү ү | ү | /y/ | |
| Ф ф | эф | /f/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Х х | ха | /x/ | |
| Ц ц | цэ | /ts/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ч ч | че | /c/ | |
| Ш ш | ша | /ʃ/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Щ щ | ща | /ɕː/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ъ ъ | кытаатыннарар бэлиэ | /◌./ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ы ы | ы | /ɯ/ | |
| Ь ь | сымнатыы бэлиэтэ | /◌ʲ/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Э э | э | /e/ | |
| Ю ю | ю | /ju/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Я я | я | /ja/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
[edit] Grammar
[edit] Syntax
The typical word order can be summarized as subject adverb - object - verb; possessor - possessed; noun - adjective.
[edit] Nouns
Nouns have plural and singular forms. The plural is formed with the suffix /-LAr/, which may surface as [-лар (-lar)], [-лэр (-ler)], [-лөр (-lör)], [-лор (-lor)], [-тар (-tar)], [-тэр (-ter)], [-төр (-tör)], [-тор (-tor)], [-дар (-dar)], [-дэр (-der)], [-дөр (-dör)], [-дор (-dor)], [-нар (-nar)], [-нэр (-ner)], [-нөр (-nör)], or [-нор (-nor)], depending on the preceding consonants and vowels. The plural is used only when referring to a number of things collectively, not when specifying an amount. Nouns have no gender, but the pronoun system distinguishes between human and non-human in the third person, using кини (kini) to refer to human beings and ол (ol) to refer to all other things. [5]
[edit] Pronouns
Personal pronouns in Sakha distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | мин (min) | биһиги (bihigi) |
| 2nd | эн (en) | эһиги (ehigi) |
| 3rd | кини (kini) | кинилэр (kiniler) |
[edit] Questions
Question words in Sakha remain in-situ; they do not move to the front of the sentence. Sample question words include: туох (tuox) "what", ким (kim) "who", хайдах (xaydax) "how", хас (xas) "how much", ханна (xanna) "where", and ханнык (xannık) "which".
[edit] Literature
The first printing in Sakha was a part of a Nicolaas Witsen's book published in 1692 in Amsterdam.
In 2005, Marianne Beerle-Moor, director of the Institute for Bible Translation, Russia/CIS, was awarded the “Civil Valour” Order for the translation of the New Testament into the Sakha language.[6]
[edit] See also
- Yakuts
- Sakha
- Dolgan language
- Semyon Novgorodov - the inventor of the first IPA-based Yakut alphabet
[edit] References
- ^ Russian Census 2002. Распространенность владения языками (кроме русского)(Knowledge of languages other than Russian)(Russian)
- ^ "[1] Ethnologue"
- ^ a b Krueger, John R. (1962). Yakut Manual. Bloomington: Indiana U Press.
- ^ Russian Census 2002. 6. Владение языками (кроме русского) населением отдельных национальностей по республикам, автономной области и автономным округам Российской Федерации (Knowledge of languages other than Russian by the population of republics, autonomous oblast and autonomous districts) (Russian)
- ^ Kirişçioğlu, M. Fatih (1999). Saha (Yakut) Türkçesi Grameri. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu. ISBN 975-16-0587-3.
- ^ Библии Перевода Институт
[edit] External links
[edit]
- Comparison of Yakut and Mongolian vocabulary
- Yakut texts with Russian translations - heroic poetry, fairy tales, legends, proverbs, etc.
- Sakhalyy suruk - Sakha Unicode fonts and Keyboard Layouts for PC
- Sakhatyla.ru - On-line Yakut-Russian, Russian-Yakut dictionary
- Sakha-English Dictionary
- Sakha Open World - mp3's of Sakha Radio
[edit] Content in Sakha
- Sakha Open World - Орто Дойду - A platform to promote the Yakut Language on the web; News, Lyrics, Music, Fonts, Forum, VideoNews (in Yakut, Unicode)
- Baayaga village website - news and stories about and by the people of Baayaga (in Yakut)
- Kyym.ru - site of Yakut newspaper
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