Northern Altai language
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Northern Altai or Northern Altay is the several tribal Turkic dialects spoken in the
Altai Republic The Altai Republic (; russian: Респу́блика Алта́й, Respublika Altay, ; Altai: , ''Altay Respublika''), also known as Gorno-Altai Republic, and colloquially, and primarily referred to in Russian to distinguish from the neighbour ...
of
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
. Though traditionally considered one language, Southern Altai and the Northern varieties are not fully mutually intelligible. Written Altai is based on Southern Altai, and is rejected by Northern Altai children. Northern Altai is written in
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
. In 2006, in the Altay kray, an alphabet was created for the Kumandin variety.


Demographics

According to data from the 2002 Russian Census, 65,534 people in Russia stated that they have command of the Altay language. Only around 10% of them speak Northern Altay varieties, while the remaining speak Southern Altay varieties. Furthermore, according to some data, only 2% of Altays fluently speak the Altay language.Энциклопедия «Кругосвет»
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Varieties

Northern Altay consists of the following varieties: * (also Qubandy/Quwandy). 1,862
Kumandins The Kumandins (natively, Kumandy, Kuvandy(g)) are a Turkic indigenous people of Siberia. They reside mainly in the Altai Krai and Altai Republic of the Russian Federation. They speak the Northern Altai Kumandin language. According to the 192 ...
claim to know their national language, but 1,044 people were registered as knowing Kumandy. Kumandy has the following three sub-varieties: **Turačak **Solton **Starobardinian * (also Kuu/Quu, Chalkandu/Shalkanduu, Lebedin). 466 Chelkans claim to speak their national language, and 539 people in all claim to know Chelkan. The (also known as Tuba language), is also often ascribed to belong to the Northern Altai group, but its relation to other languages is dubious and it may belong to
Kipchak languages The Kipchak languages (also known as the Kypchak, Qypchaq, Qypshaq or the Northwestern Turkic languages) are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family spoken by approximately 28 million people in much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, spanni ...
. 408 Tubalars claim to know their national language, and 436 people in all reported knowing Tuba. Closely related to the northern varieties of Altay are the of the
Shor language The Shor language ( endonym: шор тили, тадар тили) is a Turkic language spoken by about 2,800 people in a region called Mountain Shoriya, in the Kemerovo Province in Southwest Siberia, although the entire Shor population in this ...
and the of the
Chulym language Chulym (in Chulym: Ось тили, ''Ös tili''; Russian: Чулымский язык), also known as Chulim, Chulym-Turkic (not to be confused with the Turkic Siberian Tatar language), is the language of the Chulyms. The names which the people ...
.


Linguistic features

The following features refer to the outcome of commonly used Turkic
isoglosses An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
in Northern Altay. * */ag/ — Proto-Turkic */ag/ is found in three variations throughout Northern Altay: /u/, /aw/, /aʁ/ * */eb/ — Proto-Turkic */eb/ is found as either /yj/ or /yg/, depending on the variety * */VdV/ — With a few lexical exceptions (likely borrowings), proto-Turkic intervocalic */d/ results in /j/.


References


External links


Ethnologue entry for Northern Altai
* Page about the Kumandy variety with maps and grammatical information. * Page about the Chelkan variety with maps and grammatical information. * Page about the Tubalar variety with maps and grammatical information. {{DEFAULTSORT:Altai, Northern, Language Agglutinative languages Turkic languages Languages of Russia