Khakas language

Khakas
Хакас тілі
Native to Russia
Region Khakassia
Ethnicity Khakas people
Native speakers
 43,000  (2010 census)[1]
Turkic

  • Siberian

    • South Siberian
      • Yenisei Turkic
        • Khakas
Dialects
Fuyü Gïrgïs
Cyrillic
Official status
Official language in
  Khakassia (Russia)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 kjh
Glottolog khak1248[2]

Khakas (Khakas: Хакас тілі, Khakas tîlî) is a Turkic language spoken by the Khakas people, who mainly live in the southern Siberian Khakas Republic, or Khakassia, in Russia. The Khakas number 75,000, of whom 20,000 speak the Khakas language, most of whom are bilingual in Russian.[3]

Traditionally, the Khakas language is divided into several closely related dialects, which take their names from the different tribes: Sagay, Kacha, Koybal, Beltir, and Kyzyl. In fact, these names represent former administrative units rather than tribal or linguistic groups. The people speaking all these dialects simply referred to themselves as Tadar (i.e. Tatar).

History and documentation

The first major recordings of the Khakas language originate from the middle of the 19th century. The Finnish linguist Matthias Castrén, who travelled through northern and Central Asia between 1845–1849, wrote a treatise on the Koybal dialect, and recorded an epic. Wilhelm Radloff traveled the southern Siberian region extensively between 1859 and 1870. The result of his research was, among others, published in his four-volume dictionary, and in his ten volume series of Turkic texts. The second volume contains his Khakas materials, which were provided with a German translation. The ninth volume, provided with a Russian translation, was prepared by Radloff's student Katanov, who was a Sagay himself, and contains further Khakas materials.

The Khakas literary language, which was developed only after the Russian Revolution of 1917, is based on the central dialects Sagay and Kacha; the Beltir dialect has largely been assimilated by Sagay, and the Koybal dialect by Kacha.

In 1924, a Cyrillic alphabet was devised, which was replaced by a Latin alphabet in 1929, and by a new Cyrillic alphabet in 1939.

In 2012, an Enduring Voices expedition documented the "Xyzyl (pronounced hizzle) language from the Republic of Khakassia. Officially considered a dialect of Khakas, its speakers regard Xyzyl as a separate language of its own.[4]

Classification

The Khakas language is part of the Northeastern (Siberian) Turkic languages, which includes Shor, Chulym, Tuvan, Tofa, Sakha (Yakut), and Dolgan. It has been also part of a wider language area covering also the Southern Samoyedic languages Kamassian and Mator. A distinctive feature that these languages share with Khakas and Shor is a process of nasal assimilation, whereby a word-initial palatal stop (in all of these languages from an earlier palatal approximant *j) develops into an alveolar nasal /n/ or a palatal nasal /ɲ/, when followed by another word-internal nasal consonant.[5]

Orthography

Latin alphabet:

A a B b C c Ç ç D d Ә ә F f G g
Ƣ ƣ I i Į į J j K k L l M m N n
Ņ ņ O o Ө ө P p R r S s Ş ş T t
U u V v X x Y y Z z Ƶ ƶ Ь ь

Cyrillic alphabet:

А а Б б В в Г г Ғ ғ Д д Е е Ё ё
Ж ж З з И и Й й I i К к Л л М м
Н н Ң ң О о Ӧ ӧ П п Р р С с Т т
У у Ӱ ӱ Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ӌ ӌ Ш ш
Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я

References

  1. ↑ Khakas at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Khakas". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ Население по национальности и владению русским языком (MICROSOFT EXCEL) (in Russian). Федеральная служба государственной статистики. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
  4. ↑ Andrew Howley (2012-05-21). "NG Explorers Help Record Xyzyl Language". National Geographic Explorers Journal. Retrieved 2012-10-21.
  5. ↑ Helimski, Eugene (2003). "Areal groupings (Sprachbünde) within and across the borders of the Uralic language family: A survey" (PDF). Nyelvtudományi Közlemenyek: 158. ISSN 0029-6791. Retrieved 2014-10-31.

Further reading

External links

Khakas language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator