Orok language

Not to be confused with the Oroch language.
Orok
Uilta
Native to Russia
Region Sakhalin Oblast (Russian Far East)
Ethnicity 300 Orok (2010 census)[1]
Native speakers
50 (2010 census)[1]
Tungusic
  • Southern

    • Nanai group
      • Orok
Cyrillic
Language codes
ISO 639-3 oaa
Glottolog orok1265[2]

Orok is the Russian name for the language known by its speakers as Ulta or Ujlta. Similarly, the people are called Oroks or Ulta. It is a Tungusic language. The language is spoken in the Poronaysky and Nogliksky Administrative Divisions of Sakhalin Oblast, in the Russian Federation.

According to the 2002 Russian census there were 346 Oroks living in Russia, of whom 64 were competent in Orok. But the 2010 census, that number had dropped to 47. Oroks also live on the island of Hokkaido in Japan, but the number of speakers in uncertain, and certainly small.[3]

There are two dialects of Orok: northern (east Sakhalin) and southern (poronaysky). The variety of the language spoken on the island of Hokkaido belongs to the southern dialect.

Orok is used conversationally in everyday situations by the members of the older generation. It is also the language of oral folk literature. Oroks also speak Russian.

An alphabetic script, based on Cyrillic, was introduced in 2007. A primer has been published, and the language is taught in one school on the island of Sakhalin.

Alphabet

The Cyrillic script introduced in 2007 is:[4]

The letter "en with left hook" is contained in Unicode since version 7.0.

References

  1. 1 2 Orok at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Orok". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. Novikova, 1997
  4. Уилтадаирису (in Russian; retrieved 2011-08-17) ()

Bibliography

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