Southern Altai (also known as Oirot, Oyrot, Altai and Altai proper) is a Turkic language 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 ...

, a

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located in

Southern Siberia South Central Siberia is a geographical region in North Asia, just north of the meeting point between Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The Four Corners At approximately , the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan inters ...

on the border with

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and

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. The language has some mutual intelligibility with the

Northern Altai language Northern Altai or Northern Altay is a collective name for several tribal moribund Turkic dialects spoken in the Altai Republic of Russia. Though traditionally considered one language, Southern Altai and the Northern varieties are not fully mut ...

, leading to the two being traditionally considered as a single language. According to modern classifications—at least since the middle of the 20th century—they are considered to be two separate languages. Written Altai is based on Southern Altai. According to some reports, however, it is rejected by Northern Altai children. Dialects include Altai Proper and Talangit.

Classification

Southern Altai is a member of the Turkic language family. Within this family, there have been various attempts to classify Altai, and not all of them agree as to its position as it has a number of ambiguous characteristics. Due to certain similarities with Kyrgyz, some scholars group Altai with the Kyrgyz–Kipchak subgroup of the

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 30 million people in much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, spanni ...

Geographic distribution

Southern Altai is primarily spoken in the Altai Republic, where it has official status alongside

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

Dialects

Baskakov identifies three dialects of Southern Altai, some of which have distinctive sub-varieties: * Altai ** Maima (sub-variety) * Telengit ** Telengit-Teles ** Chui * Teleut Some sources consider Telengit and Teleut to be distinct languages.

Phonology

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

Vowels

Consonants

Phonemes in parentheses occur only in Russian

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

Writing system

Southern Altai employs a version of the Cyrillic alphabet with additional characters to represent sounds not found in Russian.

References

External links

Ethnologue entry for Southern Altai
Kipchak languages Indigenous languages of Siberia Languages written in Cyrillic script {{Russia-culture-stub