SAKHA LANGUAGE

'Sakha', or 'Yakut', is a Turkic language with around 450,000 speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation. Its speakers are known as the Sakha or the Yakuts.

Contents

Classification

Geographic distribution

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Writing system

Grammar

Syntax

Nouns

Pronouns

Questions

Literature

References

See also

External links

Language-related

Content in Sakha

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. ^[1]
Like Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish, Sakha has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually Subject Object Verb.

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 language, 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.^[2]

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.

★ Sakha Open World - mp3's of Sakha Radio

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Sakha

	Bilabial		Dental		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosives	p	b	t	d			c	ɟ	k	ɡ
Nasals	m		n				ɲ		ŋ
Fricatives					s				x	ɣ	h
Tap					ɾ
Approximant							j, j̃
Lateral approximants					l

Vowels

Vowel phonemes of Sakha

		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

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: , , , , .

Cyrillic	Name	IPA
А а	a	/a/
Б б	be	/b/
В в	ve	/v/	found only in Russian loanwords
Г г	ge	/ɡ/
Ҕ ҕ		/ɣ, ʁ/
Д д	de	/d/
Дь дь		/ɟ/
Е е	je	/e, je/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ё ё	jo	/jo/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ж ж	že	/ʒ/	found only in Russian loanwords
З з	ze	/z/	found only in Russian loanwords
И и	njebd i	/i/
Й й	i kratkəj	/j, j̃/	Nasalization of the glide is not indicated in the orthography
К к	ka	/k, q/
Л л	el	/l/
М м	em	/m/
Н н	en	/n/
Ҥ ҥ		/ŋ/
Нь нь		/ɲ/
О о	o	/o/
Ө ө	ö	/ø/
П п	pe	/p/
Р р	er	/ɾ/
С с	es	/s/
Һ һ	ha	/h/
Т т	te	/t/
У у	u	/u/
Ү ү	ü	/y/
Ф ф	ef	/f/	found only in Russian loanwords
Х х	xa	/x/
Ц ц	ce	/ʦ/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ч ч	če	/c/
Ш ш	ša	/ʃ/	found only in Russian loanwords
Щ щ	šča	/ɕː/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ъ ъ	jord znak	/◌./	found only in Russian loanwords
Ы ы	y	/ɯ/
Ь ь	njebd znak	/◌ʲ/	found only in Russian loanwords
Э э	e	/e/
Ю ю	ju	/ju/	found only in Russian loanwords
Я я	ja	/ja/	found only in Russian loanwords

Grammar

Syntax

The typical word order can be summarized as subject adverb - object - verb; possessor - possessed; noun - adjective.

Nouns

Nouns have plural and singular forms. The plural is formed with the suffix /-LAr/, which may surface as [-лар (''-lar'')], [-лэр (''-ler'')], [-лөр (''-lør'')], [-лор (''-lor'')], [-тар (''-tar'')], [-тэр (''-ter'')], [-төр (''-tør'')], [-тор (''-tor'')], [-дар (''-dar'')], [-дэр (''-der'')], [-дөр (''-dør'')], [-дор (''-dor'')], [-нар (''-nar'')], [-нэр (''-ner'')], [-нөр (''-nør'')], 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. ^[3]

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'')

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' (''xannk'') "which".

Literature

The first printing in Yakut was a part of a Nicolaas Witsen's book published in 1692 in Amsterdam.

References

1. Yakut Manual, Krueger, John R., , , Indiana U Press, 1962,
2. 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'')
3. Saha (Yakut) Türkçesi Grameri, Kirişçioğlu, M. Fatih, , , Türk Dil Kurumu, 1999, ISBN 975-16-0587-3

See also

★ Yakuts

★ Sakha

★ Dolgan language

★ Semyon Novgorodov - the inventor of the first IPA-based Yakut alphabet

External links

Language-related

★ Comparison of Yakut and Mongolian vocabulary

★ Russian translations of Yakut texts - 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

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