Tuvan language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tuvan Тыва дыл Tyva dyl
Spoken in:	Russia
Region:	Tuva
Total speakers:	200,000
Language family:	Altaic<ref>"[1] Ethnologue"</ref> (controversial) Turkic Northern Tuvan
Official status
Official language of:	Tuva (federal subject of Russia)
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`tyv`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`tyv`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Tuvan (Tuvan: Тыва дыл Tyva dyl), also known as Tuvinian, Tyvan, or Tuvin, is one of the Turkic languages. It is spoken by around 200,000 people in the Republic of Tuva in south-central Siberia. The language borrows a great number of roots from the Mongolian language and more recently from the Russian language. There are small diaspora groups of Tuvan people that speak distinct dialects of Tuvan in the People's Republic of China and in Mongolia.

1 Sounds
- 1.1 Consonants
- 1.2 Vowels
2 Orthography
3 Grammar
- 3.1 Morphology
- 3.2 Syntax
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Consonants

Tuvan has 19 native consonant phonemes. Additionally, /f/ and /ts/ are found in some Russian loanwords.

Consonant phonemes of Tuvan
	Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Stop¹	p^h	p	t^h	t	ʧ		k	g
Nasal	m		n				ŋ
Fricative			s	z	ʃ	ʒ	x
Tap/Flap			ɾ
Lateral Approximant			l
Approximant	ʋ				j

(1) Note that the distinction between initial bilabial and alveolar stops is based on aspiration for most speakers and voicing for others.

[edit] Vowels

Vowels in Tuvan exist in three varieties: long, short, and short with low tone:

Vowel phonemes of Tuvan
		Short		Long		Low Tone²
		Close	Open	Close	Open	Close	Open
Front	Unrounded	i	e	iː	eː	ì	è
Front	Rounded	y	ø	yː	øː	ỳ	ø̀
Back	Unrounded	ɯ	a	ɯː	aː	à	ɯ̀
Back	Rounded	u	o	uː	oː	ù	ò

Vowels may also be nasalized.

(2) What is currently recognized as low tone was previously referred to as pharyngealization or glottalization. Phonetic studies have demonstrated that the defining characteristic of these vowels is tone.

[edit] Orthography

The original Tuvan orthography was devised in the early 1930s by a Tuvan Buddhist monk, Lopsan-Chimit, who was later repressed in Stalinist purges. It used mostly Latin-based letters with some special letters to reflect the sounds of Tuvan. A few books, including primers intended to teach adults to read, were printed using this writing system. Lopsan-Chimit's alphabet was supplanted by a Cyrillic-based one, in use to the present day, and he was effectively erased from the history books. In the post-Soviet era, Tuvan and other scholars have taken a renewed interest in the history of Tuvan letters, and in setting the historical record straight.

The current Tuvan alphabet is modified version of the Russian alphabet, with three additional letters: ң (latin "ng" or International Phonetic Alphabet [ŋ]), Өө (latin "ö", IPA: [ø]), Үү (latin "ü", IPA [y]). The sequence of the alphabet follows Russian exactly, with ң located after Russian Н, Ө after О, and Ү after У. There is no capital letter version of ң, because it never occurs at the beginning of Tuvan words.

[edit] Grammar

[edit] Morphology

Tuvan marks nouns with six cases: genitive, accusative, dative, ablative, locative, and allative. There is no special marker for the nominative case. Verbs in Tuvan take a number of endings to mark tense, mood, and aspect. Auxiliary verbs are also used to modify the verb.

[edit] Syntax

Tuvin employs SOV word order.

[edit] References

Anderson, Gregory David, & Harrison, K. David. Tyvan. Languages of the World/Materials 257. München: Lincom Europa, 1999. ISBN 389589529X

[edit] External links

Image:Incubator-notext.png

Tuvan language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

v • d • e</div> Turkic languages
West Turkic
Bolgar	Bolgar* \| Chuvash \| Hunnic* \| Khazar*
Chagatay	Aini²\| Chagatay* \| Ili Turki \| Lop \| Uyghur \| Uzbek
Kypchak	Baraba \| Bashkir \| Crimean Tatar¹ \| Cuman* \| Karachay-Balkar \| Karaim \| Karakalpak \| Kazakh \| Kipchak* \| Krymchak \| Kumyk \| Nogay \| Tatar \| Urum¹
Oghuz	Afshar \| Azerbaijani \| Crimean Tatar¹ \| Gagauz \| Khorasani Turkish \| Ottoman Turkish* \| Pecheneg* \| Qashqai \| Salar \| Turkish \| Turkmen \| Urum¹
East Turkic
Khalaj	Khalaj
Kyrgyz-Kypchak	Altay \| Kyrgyz
Uyghur	Chulym \| Dolgan \| Fuyü Gïrgïs \| Khakas \| Northern Altay \| Shor \| Tofa \| Tuvan \| Western Yugur \| Sakha / Yakut
Old Turkic*
Notes: ¹ Listed in more than one group, ² Mixed language, * Extinct