Sakha language

language
name=Sakha
nativename=Саха тыла "Saxa tyla"
states=Russia
region=Sakha
speakers=456,288 (2002 census) [Russian Census 2002. [http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_04_04.xls Распространенность владения языками (кроме русского)] ("Knowledge of languages other than Russian")ru icon]
familycolor=Altaic
fam1=Altaic [" [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90009] Ethnologue"] (controversial)
fam2=Turkic
fam3=Northern Turkic
script=Cyrillic alphabet
nation=Sakha Republic
iso2=sah|iso3=sah|


Map showing locations of Sakha (dark blue) and Dolgan (blue)

Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language with around 460,000 speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Sakha or Yakuts.

Classification

Sakha is a member of the Northern Turkic family of languages, which includes Shor, Tuvan, and Dolgan in addition to Sakha. The Northern Turkic family is a subgroup of the Turkic languages, which some linguists believe to be member of the disputed Altaic language family. cite book | author=Krueger, John R. | title=Yakut Manual | location=Bloomington | publisher=Indiana U Press | year=1962]

Like Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish, Sakha has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually Subject Object Verb.

Geographic distribution

Sakha is spoken mainly in the Sakha Republic. It is also used by ethnic Sakha in Khabarovsk Region and a small diaspora in other parts of the Russian Federation, Turkey, and other parts of the world. Dolgan, a close relative of Sakha, considered by some a dialect, is spoken by Dolgans in Krasnoyarsk Region. Sakha is widely used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic - more Dolgans, Evenks, Evens and Yukagirs speak Yakut than their own languages. About 8% of the people of other ethnicities than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of Yakut language during the 2002 census. [Russian Census 2002. [http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_04_06.xls 6. Владение языками (кроме русского) населением отдельных национальностей по республикам, автономной области и автономным округам Российской Федерации] ("Knowledge of languages other than Russian by the population of republics, autonomous oblast and autonomous districts") ru icon]

ounds

One characteristic feature of Sakha is vowel harmony. For example, if the first vowel of a Sakha word is a front vowel, the second and other vowels of the same word are usually the same vowel or another front vowel: кэлин ("kelin") "back": э ("e") is open unrounded front, и ("i") is close unrounded front.
* [http://doydu.sakhaopenworld.org/modules/debaser/genre.php?genreid=13 Sakha Open World] - mp3's of Sakha Radio

Consonants

Grammar

yntax

The typical word order can be summarized as subject adverb - object - verb; possessor - possessed; noun - adjective.

Nouns

Nouns have plural and singular forms. The plural is formed with the suffix /-LAr/, which may surface as [-лар ("-lar")] , [-лэр ("-ler")] , [-лөр ("-lør")] , [-лор ("-lor")] , [-тар ("-tar")] , [-тэр ("-ter")] , [-төр ("-tør")] , [-тор ("-tor")] , [-дар ("-dar")] , [-дэр ("-der")] , [-дөр ("-dør")] , [-дор ("-dor")] , [-нар ("-nar")] , [-нэр ("-ner")] , [-нөр ("-nør")] , 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, but the pronoun system distinguishes between human and non-human in the third person, using кини ("kini") to refer to human beings and ол ("ol") to refer to all other things. [cite book | author=Kirişçioğlu, M. Fatih | title=Saha (Yakut) Türkçesi Grameri | location=Ankara | publisher=Türk Dil Kurumu | year=1999 |id=ISBN 975-16-0587-3]

Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Sakha distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number.

Questions

Question words in Sakha remain in-situ; they do not move to the front of the sentence. Sample question words include:туох ("tuox") "what", ким ("kim") "who", хайдах ("xaydax") "how", хас ("xas") "how much", ханна ("xanna") "where", and ханнык ("xannIPA|ɯk") "which".

Literature

The first printing in Yakut was a part of a Nicolaas Witsen's book published in 1692 in Amsterdam.

In 2005, Marianne Beerle-Moor, director of the Institute for Bible Translation, Russia/CIS, was awarded the “Civil Valour” Order for ... the translation of the New Testament into the Yakut language. [ [http://www.ibt.org.ru/english/about_en.htm Библии Перевода Институт ] ]

References

ee also

*Yakuts
*Sakha
*Dolgan language
*Semyon Novgorodov - the inventor of the first IPA-based Yakut alphabet

External links

Language-related

* [http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzsylm/mongol/mongol_sakha.html Comparison of Yakut and Mongolian vocabulary]
* [http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzsylm/sakha/bib/ Yakut texts with Russian translations] - heroic poetry, fairy tales, legends, proverbs, etc.
* [http://sakhalyy.helios-nw.ru/ Sakhalyy suruk] - Sakha Unicode fonts and Keyboard Layouts for PC
* [http://sakhatyla.ru Sakhatyla.ru] - On-line Yakut-Russian, Russian-Yakut dictionary
* [http://home.uchicago.edu/~straughn/sakhadic.pdf Sakha-English Dictionary]

Content in Sakha

* [http://doydu.sakhaopenworld.org/ Sakha Open World - Орто Дойду] - A platform to promote the Yakut Language on the web; News, Lyrics, Music, Fonts, Forum, VideoNews (in Yakut, Unicode)
* [http://www.baayaga.narod.ru Baayaga village website] - news and stories about and by the people of Baayaga (in Yakut)
* [http://www.kyym.ru Kyym.ru] - site of Yakut newspaper