The Udege language (also Udihe language, Udekhe language, Udeghe language) is the language of the
Udege people
Udege (russian: Удэгейцы; ude, удиэ or , or Udihe, Udekhe, and Udeghe correspondingly) are a native people of the Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai regions in Russia. They live along the tributaries of the Ussuri, Amur, Khunga ...
. It is a member of the
Tungusic family.
History
Previously an oral language, in 1931 an alphabet was created for writing Udege as a part of
latinisation in the Soviet Union
In the USSR, latinisation or latinization (russian: латиниза́ция, ') was the name of the campaign during the 1920s–1930s which aimed to replace traditional writing systems for all languages of the Soviet Union with systems that wo ...
.
In 1938 the policy of latinisation was reversed and the written Udige language was banned by Soviet authorities. Books in Udihe were
collected and burned. , an Udige language author and translator was declared an
enemy of the people
The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation, is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "enemies" in question are ac ...
and executed.
Vocabulary
Udege contains a variety of loanwords from the closely related
Nanai language
The Nanai language (also called Gold, Goldi, or Hezhen) is spoken by the Nanai people in Siberia, and to a much smaller extent in China's Heilongjiang province, where it is known as Hezhe. The language has about 1,400 speakers out of 17,000 ethn ...
, which have supplanted some older Udege vocabulary, such as:
*
anixe(thank you), from Nanai
anixa instead of Udege
sasa!-- are these also IPA?-->
* (work), from Nanai , instead of Udege
* (book) from Nanai , itself a loanword from zh, 檔子 (
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
: ), which actually means "file, records, archives"
In general, a large degree of mutual assimilation of the two languages has been observed in the
Bikin
Bikin (russian: Бики́н) is a town in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located on the river Bikin (a tributary of the Ussuri) southwest of Khabarovsk. Population: 19,000 (1967).
History
It was founded in 1885 as Bikinskaya and was granted town s ...
region. Udege has also exerted phonological influence on the
Bikin
Bikin (russian: Бики́н) is a town in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located on the river Bikin (a tributary of the Ussuri) southwest of Khabarovsk. Population: 19,000 (1967).
History
It was founded in 1885 as Bikinskaya and was granted town s ...
dialect of Nanai, including monophthongisation of
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s, denasalisation of
nasal vowels
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced witho ...
, deletion of reduced vowel, reduced final vowels, epenthetic vowels preventing consonant final words, and the deletion of intervocalic
Orthography
![Udehe latin alphabet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Udehe_latin_alphabet.JPG)
Udege is currently written in two versions of the Cyrillic alphabet, known as the "Petersburg" and the "Khabarovsk" versions. The Khabarovsk version is used more often.
A few older letters that were used in this language: Ж ж, З з, Љ љ, Ц ц, Ш ш, Щ щ, Ъ ъ, Ы ы, ‘Ы ‘ы, Ы̄ ы̄, Ы̂ ы̂, Ю ю, ‘Ю ‘ю, Ю̄ ю̄, Ю̂ ю̂, Я я, ‘Я ‘я, Я̄ я̄, Я̂ я̂
Phonology
Examples
The beginning of the fairy tale "Selemege":
Notes
Bibliography
*
*
*
External links
Chukchi fairy tales in Udihe (Udehe) and English* Максим Руссо
Карта языков России: удэгейский(
Полит.ру, 10 марта 2019)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Udege Language
Agglutinative languages
Critically endangered languages
Khabarovsk Krai
Languages of Russia
Tungusic languages