| Buryat | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| буряад хэлэн buryaad khelen | ||||
| Spoken in | Russia (Buryat Republic, Ust-Orda Buryatia, Aga Buryatia), northern Mongolia, China (Hulunbuir) | |||
| Ethnicity | Buryats, Barga Mongols | |||
| Native speakers | unknown (500,000 cited 1982–2002) | |||
| Language family |
Mongolic
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-2 | bua | |||
| ISO 639-3 | bua – Macrolanguage individual codes: bxu – China Buriat bxm – Mongolia Buriat bxr – Russia Buriat |
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| Linguasphere | part of 44-BAA-b | |||
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Buryat (or Buriat; Buryat Cyrillic: буряад хэлэн buryaad khelen) is a Mongolic variety spoken by the Buryats that is either classified as a language or as a major dialect group of Mongolian. The majority of Buryat speakers live in Russia along the northern border of Mongolia where it is an official language in the Buryat Republic, Ust-Orda Buryatia and Aga Buryatia.[1] In the Russian census of 2002, 353,113 people out of an ethnic population of 445,175 could speak Buryat (72.3%). Some other 15,694 can also speak Buryat, mostly ethnic Russians.[2] There are at least 100,000 ethnic Buryats in Mongolia and the People's Republic of China as well.[3] Only Buriats of Russia have their own literary language, written in a Cyrillic alphabet.[4]
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The delimitation of Buryat mostly concerns its relationship to its immediate neighbors, Mongolian proper and Khamnigan. While Khamnigan is sometimes regarded as a dialect of Buryat, this is not supported by isoglosses. The same holds for Tsongol and Sartul dialects, which rather group with Khalkha Mongolian to which they historically belong. Buryat dialects are:
Based on loan vocabulary, a division might be drawn between Russia Buriat, Mongolia Buriat and China Buriat.[6] However, as the influence of Russian is much stronger in the dialects traditionally spoken west of Lake Baikal, a division might rather be drawn between the Khori and Burgut group on the one hand and the other three groups on the other hand.[7]
Buryat has the vowel phonemes /i, ə, e, a, u, ʊ, o, ɔ/ (plus a few diphthongs),[8] short /e/ being realized as [ɯ], and the consonant phonemes /b, g, d, th, m, n, x, l, r/ (each with a corresponding palatalized phoneme) and /s, ʃ, h, j/.[9] These vowels are restricted in their occurrence according to vowel harmony.[10] The basic syllable structure is (C)V(C) in careful articulation, but word-final CC clusters may occur in more rapid speech if short vowels of non-initial syllables get lost.[11]
Buryat is an SOV language, and makes extensive use of vowel harmony. Instead of using prepositions, Buryat uses postpositions. Buryat is equipped with eight grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, instrumental, ablative, indefinite, comitative and the dative-locative.[12]
Lexical stress (word accent) falls on the last heavy nonfinal syllable when one exists. Otherwise, it falls on the word-final heavy syllable when one exists. If there are no heavy syllables, then the initial syllable is stressed. Heavy syllables without primary stress receive secondary stress:[13]
| ˌHˈHL | [ˌøːɡˈʃøːxe] | "to act encouragingly" |
| LˌHˈHL | [naˌmaːˈtuːlxa] | "to cause to be covered with leaves" |
| ˌHLˌHˈHL | [ˌbuːzaˌnuːˈdiːje] | "steamed dumplings (accusative)" |
| ˌHˈHLLL | [ˌtaːˈruːlaɡdaxa] | "to be adapted to" |
| ˈHˌH | [ˈboːˌsoː] | "bet" |
| LˈHˌH | [daˈlaiˌɡaːr] | "by sea" |
| LˈHLˌH | [xuˈdaːlinɡˌdaː] | "to the husband's parents" |
| LˌHˈHˌH | [daˌlaiˈɡaːˌraː] | "by one's own sea" |
| ˌHLˈHˌH | [ˌxyːxenˈɡeːˌreː] | "by one's own girl" |
| LˈH | [xaˈdaːr] | "through the mountain" |
| ˈLL | [ˈxada] | "mountain"[14] |
Secondary stress may also occur on word-initial light syllables without primary stress, but further research is required. The stress pattern is the same as in Khalkha Mongolian.[15]
| English | Classical Mongolian | Buryat | |
| 1 | One | Nigen | Negen |
| 2 | Two | Qoyar | Khoyor |
| 3 | Three | Ghurban | Gurban |
| 4 | Four | Dorben | Dyrben |
| 5 | Five | Tabun | Taban |
| 6 | Six | Jirghughan | Zurgaan |
| 7 | Seven | Dologhan | Doloon |
| 8 | Eight | Naiman | Nayman |
| 9 | Nine | Yisun | Yuhen |
| 10 | Ten | Arban | Arban |
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