Northern Altai or Northern Altay is a collective name for several tribal moribund Turkic dialects spoken in the

Altai Republic The Altai Republic, also known as the Gorno-Altai Republic, is a republic of Russia located in southern Siberia. The republic borders Kemerovo Oblast to the north, Khakassia to the northeast, Tuva to the east, Altai Krai to the west, as well ...

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. 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 The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

. In 2006, in the Altay kray, an alphabet was created for the Kumandin variety.

Phonology

Northern Altai has 8 vowels, which may be long or short, and 20 consonants, plus marginal consonants that occur only in loan words.

Vowels

Consonants

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: * Kumandin dialect (also Qubandy/Quwandy). 1,862 Kumandins 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 * Chelkan dialect (also Kuu/Quu, Chalkandu/Shalkanduu, Lebedin). 466 Chelkans claim to speak their national language, and 539 people in all claim to know Chelkan. The Tubalar language (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. 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 and the Lower Chulym dialect of the Chulym language.

Linguistic features

The following features refer to the outcome of commonly used Turkic isoglosses 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

* 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 Siberian Turkic languages Indigenous languages of Siberia