Yakut language

Lore & Background

Yakut is a member of the Northeastern Common Turkic family of languages, which also includes Shor, Tuvan and Dolgan. 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 and many cognate words are hard to notice when heard. Nevertheless, Yakut contains many features which are important for the reconstruction of Proto-Turkic, such as the preservation of long vowels. Even with significant divergent features, Sakha (i.e. Yakut) is typically grouped with the Common Turkic branch of the family rather than the Oghuric branch with Chuvash. A relatively few scholars (W. Radlov, O. Boethlink and others) have expressed the view that Sakha (i.e. Yakut) is not Turkic.

Reader's Guide

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 Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other parts of the world. Dolgan, a close relative of Yakut, which formerly was considered by some a dialect of Yakut, is spoken by Dolgans in Krasnoyarsk Region. Yakut is widely used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic – more Dolgans, Evenks, Evens and Yukagirs speak Yakut rather than their own languages. About 8% of people of ethnicities other than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of the Yakut language in the 2002 census. Yakut has twenty phonemic vowels: eight short vowels, eight long vowels, and four diphthongs. Yakut and the closely related Dolgan language are the only Turkic languages without postalveolar sibilants. Additionally, no known Turkic languages other than Yakut and Khorasani Turkic have the palatal nasal /ɲ/. Yakut's vowel harmony in suffixes is the most complex system in the Turkic family.

Did You Know?

• Yakut and the closely related Dolgan language are the only Turkic languages without postalveolar sibilants.
• No known Turkic languages other than Yakut and Khorasani Turkic have the palatal nasal /ɲ/.
• Yakut's vowel harmony in suffixes is the most complex system in the Turkic family.
• The historical change of *s > h, known as debuccalization, is an active phonological process in modern Yakut, where intervocalic /s/ becomes [h].
• About 8% of people of ethnicities other than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of the Yakut language in the 2002 census.

Classification & the Question of Turkic Identity

Yakut is a member of the Northeastern Common Turkic family of languages, which also includes Shor, Tuvan and Dolgan. Like most Turkic languages, Yakut has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually subject–object–verb. Yakut has been influenced by Tungusic and Mongolian languages. 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 and many cognate words are hard to notice when heard. Nevertheless, Yakut contains many features which are important for the reconstruction of Proto-Turkic, such as the preservation of long vowels. Even with significant divergent features, Sakha (i.e. Yakut) is typically grouped with the Common Turkic branch of the family rather than the Oghuric branch with Chuvash. A relatively few scholars (W. Radlov, O. Boethlink and others) have expressed the view that Sakha (i.e. Yakut) is not Turkic.

Phonological Distinctiveness

Yakut has the following consonants phonemes, where the IPA value is provided in slashes '//' and the native script value is provided in bold followed by the romanization in parentheses. /n, t, d/ are laminal denti-alveolar [n̪, t̪, d̪], whereas /s, l, ɾ/ are alveolar [s, l, ɾ]. The nasal glide /ȷ̃/ is not distinguished from /j/ in the orthography, where both are written as ⟨й⟩. Thus айыы can be ayïï [ajɯː] 'deed, creation, work' or aỹïï [aȷ̃ɯː] 'sin, transgression'. The nasal glide /ȷ̃/ has a very restricted distribution, appearing in very few words. /ɾ/ is pronounced as a flap [ɾ] between vowels, e.g. орон (oron) [oɾon] 'place', and as a trill [r] at the end of words, e.g. тур (tur) [tur] 'stand'. /ɾ/ does not occur at the beginning of words in native Yakut words; borrowed Russian words with onset /ɾ/ 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 Turkic languages. Yakut and the closely related Dolgan language are the only Turkic languages without postalveolar sibilants. Additionally, no known Turkic languages other than Yakut and Khorasani Turkic have the palatal nasal /ɲ/. Yakut has twenty phonemic vowels: eight short vowels, eight long vowels, and four diphthongs. The historical change of *s > h, known as debuccalization, is a common sound-change across the world's languages, being characteristic of such language groups 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 is also an active phonological process in modern Yakut. Intervocalically the phoneme /s/ becomes [h]. For example the /s/ in кыыс (kïïs) 'girl' becomes [h] between vowels.

Sociolinguistic Role & Geographic Spread

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 Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other parts of the world. Dolgan, a close relative of Yakut, which formerly was considered by some a dialect of Yakut, is spoken by Dolgans in Krasnoyarsk Region. Yakut is widely used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic – more Dolgans, Evenks, Evens and Yukagirs speak Yakut rather than their own languages. About 8% of people of ethnicities other than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of the Yakut language in the 2002 census.

Morphological Complexity & Borrowing Layers

Like other Turkic languages, Yakut is an agglutinative language and features vowel harmony. Consonants at morpheme boundaries undergo extensive assimilation, 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. There is an additional regular morphophonological pattern for [t]-final stems: they assimilate in place of articulation with an immediately following labial or velar. For example at 'horse' > akkït 'your [pl.] horse', > appït 'our horse'. The Yakut language has a large number of loanwords of Mongolic origin, a layer of vocabulary of unclear origin, as well as numerous recent borrowings from Russian. The typical word order can be summarized as subject – adverb – object – verb; possessor – possessed; adjective – noun. Personal pronouns in Yakut distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number. Although nouns have no gender, the pronoun 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. 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.