Yakut , also known as Yakutian, Sakha, Saqa or Saxa ( sah, саха тыла), is a

Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...

spoken by around 450,000 native speakers, primarily the ethnic

Yakuts The Yakuts, or the Sakha ( sah, саха, ; , ), are a Turkic ethnic group who mainly live in the Republic of Sakha in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taymyr and Evenk Districts ...

and one of the official languages of Sakha (Yakutia), a federal republic in the

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia North Asia or Northern Asia, also referred to as Siberia, is the northern region of Asia, which is defined in geographic ...

. The Yakut language differs from all other Turkic languages in the presence of a layer of vocabulary of unclear origin (possibly Paleo-Siberian). There is also a large number of words of Mongolian origin related to ancient borrowings, as well as numerous recent borrowings from Russian. Like other Turkic languages and their ancestor

Proto-Turkic Proto-Turkic is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Turkic languages that was spoken by the Proto-Turks before their divergence into the various Turkic peoples. Proto-Turkic separated into Oghur (western) and Common Tur ...

, Yakut is an

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remai ...

and features

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

Classification

Yakut is a member of the Northeastern Common Turkic family of languages, which also includes Shor, Tuvan and

Dolgan Dolgans (; Dolgan: , , (Sakha); Yakut: ) are an ethnic group who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. They are descended from several groups, particularly Evenks, one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. They adopted a Turk ...

. Like most

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic l ...

, Yakut has

, is

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

and has no

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...

. Word order is usually subject–object–verb. Yakut has been influenced by

Tungusic Tungusic may refer to: *The Tungusic languages *The Tungusic peoples, people who speak a Tungusic language {{dab ...

and

Mongolian languages The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Asia and East Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this language f ...

. Historically, Yakut left the community of Common Turkic speakers relatively early. Due to this, it diverges in many ways from other Turkic languages and mutual intelligibility between Yakut and other Turkic languages is low. Nevertheless, Yakut contains many features which are important for the reconstruction of

, such as the preservation of long vowels.

Geographic distribution

Yakut is spoken mainly in the Sakha Republic. It is also used by ethnic Yakuts in Khabarovsk Region and a small diaspora in other parts of the

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

, and other parts of the world.

, a close relative of Yakut, considered by some a dialect of Yakut, is spoken by

Dolgans Dolgans (; Dolgan: , , ( Sakha); Yakut: ) are an ethnic group who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. They are descended from several groups, particularly Evenks, one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. They adopted a T ...

in Krasnoyarsk Region. Yakut is widely used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic – more

Evenks The Evenks (also spelled Ewenki or Evenki based on their endonym )Autonym: (); russian: Эвенки (); (); formerly known as Tungus or Tunguz; mn, Хамниган () or Aiwenji () are a Tungusic people of North Asia. In Russia, the Ev ...

Evens The Evens ( eve, эвэн; pl. , in Even and , in Russian; formerly called ''Lamuts'') are a people in Siberia and the Russian Far East. They live in regions of the Magadan Oblast and Kamchatka Krai and northern parts of Sakha east of ...

and

Yukagirs The Yukaghirs, or Yukagirs ( (), russian: юкаги́ры) are a Siberian ethnic group people in the Russian Far East, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. Geographic distribution The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region ...

speak Yakut than their own languages. About 8% of the people of other ethnicities than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of the Yakut language during the 2002 census.

Phonology

Consonants

Yakut has the following consonants

phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

, where the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioner ...

value is provided in slashes '//' and the native script value is provided in bold followed by the romanization in parentheses. * are

laminal A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...

denti-alveolar , whereas are alveolar . * The nasal glide is not distinguished from in the orthography, where both are written as <й>. Thus айыы can be ''ayïï'' 'deed, creation, work' or ''aỹïï'' 'sin, transgression.' The nasal glide has a very restricted distribution, appearing in very few words. * is pronounced as a flap // between vowels, e.g. орон (''oron'') 'place', and as a trill at the end of words, e.g. тур (''tur'') 'stand'. ** does not occur at the beginning of words in native Yakut words; borrowed Russian words with onset are usually rendered with an epenthetic vowel, e.g. Russian рама (''rama'') > Yakut араама (''araama'') 'frame'. Yakut is in many ways phonologically unique among the

. Yakut and the closely related

Dolgan language The Dolgan language is a Turkic language with around 1,000 speakers, spoken in the Taymyr Peninsula in Russia. The speakers are known as the Dolgans. The word "Dolgan" means 'tribe living on the middle reaches of the river'. This is most ...

are the only Turkic languages without hushing sibilants. Additionally, no known Turkic languages other than Yakut and

Khorasani Turkic Khorasani Turkic (, ) is an Oghuz Turkic language spoken in the North Khorasan Province and the Razavi Khorasan Province in Iran. Nearly all Khorasani Turkic speakers are also bilingual in Persian. The closest language of Khorasani Turkic is c ...

have the palatal nasal //.

Consonant assimilation

Consonants at morpheme boundaries undergo extensive

assimilation Assimilation may refer to: Culture *Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs **Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the progre ...

, both progressive and regressive. All suffixes possess numerous allomorphs. For suffixes which begin with a consonant, the surface form of the consonant is conditioned on the stem-final segment. There are four such archiphonemic consonants: ''G'', ''B'', ''T'', and ''L''. Examples of each are provided in the following table for the suffixes ''-GIt'' (second-person plural possessive suffix, ''oɣoɣut'' 'y'all's child'), ''-BIt'' (first-person plural possessive suffix, ''oɣobut'', 'our child'), ''-TA'' (

partitive case The partitive case ( abbreviated , , or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with n ...

suffix, ' 'some teeth'), ''-LARA'' (third-person plural possessive suffix, ''oɣoloro'' 'their child'). Note that the alternation in the vowels is governed by vowel harmony (see the main article and the below section). There is an additional regular

morphophonological Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...

pattern for []-final stems: they assimilate in place of articulation with an immediately following labial or velar. For example ''at'' 'horse' > ''akkït'' 'y'all's horse', > ''appït'' 'our horse'.

Debuccalization

Yakut initial s- corresponds to initial h- in Dolgan and played an important operative rule in the development of proto-Yakut, ultimately resulting in initial Ø- < *h- < *s- (example: Dolgan huoq and Yakut suox, both meaning "not"). The historical change of ''*s'' > ''h'', known as

debuccalization Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspir ...

, is a common sound-change across the world's languages, being characteristic of such languages as Greek and Indo-Iranian in their development from Proto-Indo-European, as well as such Turkic languages as Bashkir, e.g. höt 'milk' < *süt.

Debuccalization Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspir ...

of /s/ to /h/ is also found as a

diachronic Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A ''synchronic'' approach (from grc, συν- "together" and "time") considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic ...

change from

Proto-Celtic Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celt ...

to Brittonic, and has actually become a ''

synchronic Synchronic may refer to: * ''Synchronic'' (film), a 2019 American science fiction film starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie *Synchronic analysis, the analysis of a language at a specific point of time *Synchronicity, the experience of two or m ...

'' grammaticalised feature called

lenition In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a ...

in the related

Goidelic The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages. Goidelic languages historically ...

languages ( Irish, Scottish, and

Manx Manx (; formerly sometimes spelled Manks) is an adjective (and derived noun) describing things or people related to the Isle of Man: * Manx people **Manx surnames * Isle of Man It may also refer to: Languages * Manx language, also known as Manx ...

). Debuccalization is also an active phonological process in modern Yakut. Intervocalically the phoneme // becomes []. For example the /s/ in кыыс (''kïïs'') 'girl' becomes [h] between vowels:

Vowels

Yakut has twenty phonemic vowels: eight short vowels, eight long vowels, and four diphthongs. The following table give broad transcriptions for each vowel phoneme, as well as the native script bold and romanization in italics:

Vowel harmony

Like other

, a characteristic feature of Yakut is progressive vowel harmony. Most root words obey vowel harmony, for example in кэлин (''kelin'') 'back', all the vowels are front and unrounded. Yakut's vowel harmony in suffixes is the most complex system in the Turkic family. Vowel harmony is an

process where vowels in one syllable take on certain features of vowels in the preceding syllable. In Yakut, subsequent vowels all take on frontness and all non-low vowels take on lip rounding of preceding syllables' vowels. There are two main rules of vowel harmony: # Frontness/backness harmony: ## Front vowels are always followed by front vowels. ## Back vowels are always followed by back vowels. # Rounding harmony: ## Unrounded vowels are always followed by unrounded vowels. ## Close rounded vowels always occur after close rounded vowels. ## Open unrounded vowels do not assimilate in rounding with close rounded vowels. The quality of the diphthongs /ie, ïa, uo, üö/ for the purposes of vowel harmony is determined by the first segment in the diphthong. Taken together, these rules mean that the pattern of subsequent syllables in Yakut is entirely predictable, and all words will follow the following pattern: Like the consonant assimilation rules above, suffixes display numerous allomorphs determined by the stem they attach to. There are two archiphoneme vowels ''I'' (an underlyingly high vowel) and ''A'' (an underlyingly low vowel).

Examples of ''I'' can be seen in the first-person singular possessive agreement suffix ''-(I)m'': as in (a): The underlyingly low vowel phoneme ''A'' is represented through the third-person singular agreement suffix ''-(t)A'' in (b):

Orthography

After three earlier phases of development, Yakut is currently written using the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic 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 cou ...

: the modern Yakut alphabet, established in 1939 by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, consists of all the Russian characters with five additional letters for

not present in Russian: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү, as follows:

Long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...

are represented through the doubling of vowels, e.g. үүт (''üüt'') // 'milk,' a practice that many scholars follow in Romanizations of the language. The full Yakut alphabet contains letters for consonant phonemes not present in native words (and thus not indicated in the phonology tables above): the letters В //, Е //, Ё /, /, Ж //, З //, Ф //, Ц //, Ш //, Щ //, Ъ, Ю //, Я // are used exclusively in Russian loanwords. In addition, in native Yakut words, the

soft sign The soft sign (Ь, ь, italics ) also known as the front yer, front jer, or er malak (lit. "small er") is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel. As with its companion, the b ...

<Ь> is used exclusively in the digraphs <дь> and <нь>.

Transliteration

There are numerous conventions for the Romanization of Yakut. Bibliographic sources and libraries typically use the ALA-LC Romanization tables for non-Slavic languages in Cyrillic script. Linguists often employ Turkological standards for transliteration, or a mixture of Turkological standards and the

. In addition, others employ Turkish orthography. Comparison of some of these systems can be seen in the following:

Grammar

Syntax

The typical word order can be summarized as subject –

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering q ...

– object –

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

; possessor – possessed;

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

–

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Organism, Living creatures (including people ...

Nouns

Nouns have plural and singular forms. The plural is formed with the suffix /-LAr/, which may surface as -лар (''-lar''), -лэр (''-ler''), -лөр (''-lör''), -лор (''-lor''), -тар (''-tar''), -тэр (''-ter''), -төр (''-tör''), -тор (''-tor''), -дар (''-dar''), -дэр (''-der''), -дөр (''-dör''), -дор (''-dor''), -нар (''-nar''), -нэр (''-ner''), -нөр (''-nör''), or -нор (''-nor''), depending on the preceding consonants and vowels. The plural is used only when referring to a number of things collectively, not when specifying an amount. Nouns have no

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

. There is a handful of irregular plural nouns, e.g. уол (''uol'') 'boy; son' > уолаттар (''uolattar''), кыыс (''kïïs'') 'girl; daughter' > кыыргыттар (''kïïrgïttar''). Yakut has eight

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In va ...

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of ...

(unmarked),

accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...

''-(n)I'',

dative In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jaco ...

''-GA'',

partitive In linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that indicates partialness. Nominal partitives are syntactic constructions, such as "some of the children", and may be classified semantically as either set partitives or entity partitives ba ...

''-TA'',

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...

''-(t)tan'',

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instr ...

''-(I)nAn'',

comitative In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", ...

''-LIIn'', and

comparative general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as well ...

''-TAAɣAr''. Examples of these are shown in the following table for a vowel-final stem ''eye'' 'peace' and a consonant-final stem ''uot'' 'fire': A notable detail about Yakut case is the absence of the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

, a feature which some argue is due to historical contact with

Tungusic languages The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the doz ...

. Possessors are unmarked, with the possessive relationship only being realized on the

possessive suffix In linguistics, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive affixes are found in many languages ...

on the possessed noun. For example, in (a) the first-person pronouns are not marked for genitive case; neither do full nominal possessors receive any marking (b):

Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Yakut distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number. Although nouns have no

, the

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would n ...

system distinguishes between human and non-human in the third person, using кини (''kini'', 'he/she') to refer to human beings and ол (''ol'', 'it') to refer to all other things.

Questions

Question words in Yakut remain in-situ; they do not

move Move may refer to: People * Daniil Move (born 1985), a Russian auto racing driver Brands and enterprises * Move (company), an online real estate company * Move (electronics store), a defunct Australian electronics retailer * Daihatsu Move ...

to the front of the sentence. Sample question words include: туох (') 'what', ким (''kim'') 'who', хайдах (''xajdax'') 'how', хас (''xas'') 'how much; how many', ханна (''xanna'') 'where', and ханнык (''xannïk'') 'which'.

Vocabulary

Numerals

Oral and written literature

The Yakut have a tradition of oral epic in their language called " Olonkho", traditionally performed by skilled performers. The subject matter is based on Yakut mythology and legends. Versions of many Olonkho poems have been written down and translated since the 19th century, but only a very few older performers of the oral Olonkho tradition are still alive. They have begun a program to teach young people to sing this in their language and revive it, though in a modified form. The first printing in Yakut was a part of a book by Nicolaas Witsen published in 1692 in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

. In 2005, Marianne Beerle-Moor, director of the Institute for Bible Translation, Russia/CIS, was awarded the Order of Civil Valour by the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) for the translation of the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

into Yakut.

Examples

Article 1 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

References

Bibliography

* * (in Russian) * * * * * (in Turkish) * * * * * * * * *

External links

Language-related

Yakut Vocabulary List
(from the World Loanword Database)
Yakut thematic vocabulary lists
*
Yakut texts with Russian translations
in the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...

– heroic poetry, fairy tales, legends, proverbs, etc.
Sakhalyy suruk
– Yakut Unicode fonts and Keyboard Layouts for PC
Sakhatyla.ru
– On-line Yakut–Russian, Russian–Yakut dictionary
Yakut–English Dictionary

BGN/PCGN romanization tool for YakutSakha Open World
– MP3's of Sakha Radio

Content in Yakut

Sakha Open World – Орто Дойду
– A platform to promote the Yakut Language on the web; News, Lyrics, Music, Fonts, Forum, VideoNews (in Yakut,

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

)
Baayaga village website
– news and stories about and by the people of Baayaga (in Yakut)
Kyym.ru
– site of Yakut newspaper
НВК Саха (''NVK Sakha'')
Yakut language news channel on YouTube {{Authority control Agglutinative languages Siberian Turkic languages Vowel-harmony languages Languages of Russia Turkic languages