Sakha language
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Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language with around 363,000 speakers that is spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation. Its speakers are known as the Sakha or the 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 Turkish family is a subgroup of the Turkic languages, which most linguists believe to be member of an Altaic language family.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 language, 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.Sounds
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:kelin "back": e is open unrounded front, i is close unrounded front.
- [Sakha Open World] - mp3's of Sakha Radio
Consonants
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives | p | b | t | d | c | ɟ | k | g | ||||
| Nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||
| Fricatives | s | x | ɣ | h | ||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||||||
| Approximant | j, j̃ | |||||||||||
| Lateralapproximants | l | |||||||||||
Vowels
| Short | Long | Diphthong | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Open | Close | Open | |||
| Front | Unrounded | i | e | iː | eː | ie |
| Rounded | y | ø | yː | øː | yø | |
| Back | Unrounded | ɯ | a | ɯː | aː | ɯa |
| Rounded | u | o | uː | oː | uo | |
Writing system
Sakha is written using the Cyrillic script: the modern Sakha alphabet, that was established in 1939 by Soviet Union, consists of the Russian one plus 5 additional letters: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү.
| Cyrillic | IPA | |
|---|---|---|
| А а | /a/ | |
| Б б | /b/ | |
| В в | /v/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Г г | /g/ | |
| Ҕ ҕ | /ɣ, ʁ/ | |
| Д д | /d/ | |
| Дь дь | /ɟ/ | |
| Е е | /e, je/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ё ё | /jo/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ж ж | /ʒ/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| З з | /z/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| И и | /i/ | |
| Й й | /j, j̃/ | Nasalization of the glide is not indicated in the orthography |
| К к | /k, q/ | |
| Л л | /l/ | |
| М м | /m/ | |
| Н н | /n/ | |
| Ҥ ҥ | /ŋ/ | |
| Нь нь | /ɲ/ | |
| О о | /o/ | |
| Ө ө | /ø/ | |
| П п | /p/ | |
| Р р | /r/ | |
| С с | /s/ | |
| Һ һ | /h/ | |
| Т т | /t/ | |
| У у | /u/ | |
| Ү ү | /y/ | |
| Ф ф | /f/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Х х | /x/ | |
| Ц ц | /ts/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ч ч | /c/ | |
| Ш ш | /ʃ/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Щ щ | /ɕː/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ъ ъ | ? | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Ы ы | /ɯ/ | |
| Ь ь | ? | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Э э | /e/ | |
| Ю ю | /ju/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
| Я я | /ja/ | found only in Russian loanwords |
Grammar
Syntax
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 [-lar], [-ler], [-lør], [-lor], [-tar], [-ter], [-tør], [-tor], [-dar], [-der], [-dør], [-dor], [-nar], [-ner], [-nør], or [-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 kini to refer to human beings and ol to refer to all other things.Pronouns
Personal pronouns in Sakha distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number.
| Singular | Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | min | bihigi | ||
| 2nd | en | ehigi | ||
| 3rd | kini | kiniler |
Questions
Question words in Sakha remain in-situ; they do not move to the front of the sentence. Sample question words include: tuox "what", kim "who", xaydax "how", xas "how much", xanna "where", xannɯk "which".Literature
The first printing in Yakut was a part of a Nicolaas Witsen's book published in 1692 in Amsterdam.
References
See also
External links
- [Sakha Open World - Орто Дойду] - A platform to promote the Yakut Language on the web; News, Lyrics, Music, Fonts, Forum (in Yakut, Unicode)
- [Russian translations of Yakut texts] - heroic poetry, fairy tales, legends, proverbs, etc.
- [Baayaga village website] - news and stories about and by the people of Baayaga (in Yakut)
- [Sakhalyy suruk] - Sakha Unicode fonts and Keyboard Layouts for PC
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