Evenk language

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Evenki
Spoken in:	China, Mongolia, Russia
Region:	Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang in China; Selenge Province in Mongolia; Evenk Autonomous Okrug in Russia
Total speakers:	29,000
Language family:	Altaic Tungusic Northern Tungusic Evenki
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`to be added`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`evn`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

The Evenki language (erroneously, Evenk language) is the largest of the northern group of the Tungusic languages (or Manchu-Tungusic languages or Manchu-Tunguz languages), a group which also includes the Even and Negidal languages.

It is spoken by Evenks in Russia, Mongolia and China. According to the 2002 Russian census, it has around 7,500 speakers.

The basic vocabulary and inflectional morphemes have almost nothing in common with the Mongolian and the Turkic languages, with which the Tungusic languages are sometimes popularly connected. In certain areas the influences of the Yakut and the Buryat languages are strong. The influence of Russian is general and overwhelming (in 1979, 75.2 % of the Evenkis spoke Russian, rising to 92.7% in 2002). The Evenki language varies considerably and is divided into three large dialect groups: the northern, the southern and the eastern dialect. These are further divided into minor dialects. The written language based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created in the late 1920s for Evenkis living in the Soviet Union. In China, Evenki is written in the Mongolian alphabet. [1]