Arin is an extinct Yeniseian language formerly spoken in

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

by the Arin people along the

Yenisei River The Yenisey or Yenisei ( ; , ) is the list of rivers by length, fifth-longest river system in the world, and the largest to drain into the Arctic Ocean. Rising in Mungaragiyn-gol in Mongolia, it follows a northerly course through Lake Baikal a ...

, predominantly on its left shore, between

Yeniseysk Yeniseysk ( rus, Енисейск, p=jɪnʲɪˈsʲejsk) is a town in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located on the Yenisei River. Population: 20,000 (1970). History Yeniseysk was founded in 1619 as a stockaded town—the first town on the Yenisei ...

and

Krasnoyarsk Krasnoyarsk is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It is situated along the Yenisey, Yenisey River, and is the second-largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk, with a p ...

, north of the

Minusinsk Minusinsk (; ) is a historical types of inhabited localities in Russia, town in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. Population: 44,500 (1973). History "About 330-200 B.C. the iron age triumphed at Minusinsk, producing spiked axes, partly bronze and ...

region. However, it has been suggested that the Arin people had historically occupied a larger geographical range. It became extinct in the 18th century, with the death of Arzamas Loskutov, who was an informant for

Gerhard Friedrich Müller Gerhard Friedrich Müller (; 29 October 1705 – ) was a Russian–German historian and pioneer ethnologist. Early life Müller was born in Herford and educated at Leipzig. In 1725, he was invited to St. Petersburg to co-found the Imperial ...

in 1731, and for a

Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...

adventurer named Ivan Kovrigin in 1735. It is believed that the term ''Ar'' or ''Ara'' was used by speakers of Arin to refer to themselves.

Classification

It is classified as belonging to the Arinic branch, being its only attested language. The closest known relative of Arin, Pumpokol, has been suggested to be similar to the language of the ruling elite of the

Xiongnu The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of Nomad, nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese historiography, Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, t ...

, as well as that of the Jie ruling class of the

Later Zhao Zhao, briefly known officially as Wei (衛) in 350 AD, known in historiography as the Later Zhao (; 319–351) or Shi Zhao (石趙), was a dynasty of China ruled by the Shi family of Jie ethnicity during the Sixteen Kingdoms period. Among the ...

dynasty.

Geographical distribution

Hydronyms A hydronym (from , , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a subset of top ...

associated with Arin have the suffixes , , , , and (meaning "river") and / (meaning "water"). These hydronyms, along with Khanty folklore telling of an eastern people known as the "Ar people", indicate that Arin may have once been spread out as far west as the Ob.

Phonology

One notable aspect of the Arin

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

is the correspondence of words starting with the word-initial and words in other Yeniseian languages that start with a bare vowel. For example, the Arin word (meaning 'water') corresponds to the Ket word and the Kott word .

Vowels

The vowel system in Arin is as follows: # The sound , transcribed as , is only attested in the words 'six', 'sixteen', 'sixty', and 'ear', and potentially also in (also recorded as ) 'duck'.

Consonants

Consonants in parentheses are sparsely attested or unattested. # is only assumed from other Yeniseian languages and is only a prosodic device of tone. There are 11 palatal-nonpalatal consonant oppositions.

Lexicon

Etymological analysis suggests that speakers of the Arin language, as with other members of the Yeniseian people, were bilingual in

Siberian Turkic languages The Siberian Turkic or Northeastern Common Turkic languages, are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family. The following table is based upon the classification scheme presented by Lars Johanson (1998). All languages of the branch combined have ...

; for example, the Arin word (meaning "ore") has been suggested to stem from the

Old Turkic Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...

compound word (meaning "iron blood"). There are over 400 lexica for the Arin language, recorded in the 18th century.

General

Body parts

Family members

Numerals

References

External links

Arin basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{Paleosiberian languages Extinct languages of Asia Yeniseian languages Languages extinct in the 18th century