Sakha language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sakha Саха тыла saxa tyla
Spoken in:	Russia
Region:	Sakha
Total speakers:	~363,000
Language family:	Altaic<ref>"[1] Ethnologue"</ref> (controversial) Turkic Northern Turkic Sakha
Writing system:	Cyrillic alphabet
Official status
Official language of:	Sakha Republic
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`sah`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`sah`
Image:SakhaDolganWorld.jpg Map showing locations of Sakha (dark blue) and Dolgan (blue)</center>
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language with around 363,000 speakers that is spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation. Its speakers are known as the Sakha or the Yakuts.

1 Classification
2 Geographic distribution
3 Sounds
- 3.1 Consonants
- 3.2 Vowels
4 Writing system
5 Grammar
- 5.1 Syntax
- 5.2 Nouns
6 Pronouns
- 6.1 Questions
7 Literature
8 References
9 See also
10 External links

[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.

Like Finnish, Hungarian, 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 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.

[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: kelin "back": e is open unrounded front, i is close unrounded front.

Sakha Open World - mp3's of Sakha Radio

[edit] Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Sakha
	Bilabial		Dental		Alveolar	Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosives	p	b	t	d		c	ɟ	k	g
Nasals	m		n			ɲ		ŋ
Fricatives					s			x	ɣ	h
Tap					ɾ
Approximant						j, j̃
Lateral</br>approximants					l

[edit] Vowels

Vowel phonemes of Sakha
		Short		Long		Diphthong
		Close	Open	Close	Open	Diphthong
Front	Unrounded	i	e	iː	eː	ie
Front	Rounded	y	ø	yː	øː	yø
Back	Unrounded	ɯ	a	ɯː	aː	ɯa
Back	Rounded	u	o	uː	oː	uo

[edit] Writing system

Sakha is written using the Cyrillic script: the modern Sakha alphabet, that was established in 1939 by Soviet Union, consists of the Russian one plus 5 additional letters: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү.

Cyrillic	IPA
А а	/a/
Б б	/b/
В в	/v/	found only in Russian loanwords
Г г	/g/
Ҕ ҕ	/ɣ, ʁ/
Д д	/d/
Дь дь	/ɟ/
Е е	/e, je/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ё ё	/jo/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ж ж	/ʒ/	found only in Russian loanwords
З з	/z/	found only in Russian loanwords
И и	/i/
Й й	/j, j̃/	Nasalization of the glide is not indicated in the orthography
К к	/k, q/
Л л	/l/
М м	/m/
Н н	/n/
Ҥ ҥ	/ŋ/
Нь нь	/ɲ/
О о	/o/
Ө ө	/ø/
П п	/p/
Р р	/r/
С с	/s/
Һ һ	/h/
Т т	/t/
У у	/u/
Ү ү	/y/
Ф ф	/f/	found only in Russian loanwords
Х х	/x/
Ц ц	/ts/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ч ч	/c/
Ш ш	/ʃ/	found only in Russian loanwords
Щ щ	/ɕː/	found only in Russian loanwords
Ъ ъ	?	found only in Russian loanwords
Ы ы	/ɯ/
Ь ь	?	found only in Russian loanwords
Э э	/e/
Ю ю	/ju/	found only in Russian loanwords
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 [-lar], [-ler], [-lør], [-lor], [-tar], [-ter], [-tør], [-tor], [-dar], [-der], [-dør], [-dor], [-nar], [-ner], [-nør], or [-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 kini to refer to human beings and ol to refer to all other things.

[edit] Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Sakha distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number.

	Singular	Plural
1st	min	bihigi
2nd	en	ehigi
3rd	kini	kiniler

[edit] Questions

Question words in Sakha remain in-situ; they do not move to the front of the sentence. Sample question words include: tuox "what", kim "who", xaydax "how", xas "how much", xanna "where", xannɯk "which".

[edit] Literature

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

[edit] References

Kirişçioğlu, M. Fatih (1999). Saha (Yakut) Türkçesi Grameri. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu. ISBN 975-16-0587-3.

Krueger, John R. (1962). Yakut Manual. Bloomington: Indiana U Press.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Sakha Open World - Орто Дойду - A platform to promote the Yakut Language on the web; News, Lyrics, Music, Fonts, Forum (in Yakut, Unicode)
Russian translations of Yakut texts - heroic poetry, fairy tales, legends, proverbs, etc.
Baayaga village website - news and stories about and by the people of Baayaga (in Yakut)
Sakhalyy suruk - Sakha Unicode fonts and Keyboard Layouts for PC

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