Sakha language - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...

with around 360,000 native speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Sakha or Yakuts

Yakuts

Yakuts , are a Turkic people associated with the Sakha Republic.The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages....

.

Sakha is an agglutinative language

Agglutinative language

An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...

, and it employs vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

Classification

Sakha is a member of the Northern Turkic

Turkic languages

family of languages, which includes Shor

Shor language

The Shor language is a Turkic language spoken by about 10,000 people in the Kemerovo Province in south-central Siberia. In the history of the Turkic states and China, Shors played an important role, mostly connected with their offshoot Shatuo. Presently, not all ethnic Shors speak Shor, and the...

, Tuvan

Tuvan language

Tuvan , also known as Tuvinian, Tyvan or Tuvin, is a Turkic language spoken in the Republic of Tuva in south-central Siberia in Russia. The language has borrowed a great number of roots from the Mongolian language and more recently from the Russian language...

, and Dolgan

Dolgan language

The Dolgan language is a Turkic language with around 5,000 speakers, spoken in the Taymyr Peninsula in Russia. Its speakers are known as the Dolgans.-Classification:...

in addition to Sakha. Like Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, Finnish, and Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

, Sakha has vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

, is agglutinative

Agglutinative language

and has no grammatical gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

. 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

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, and other parts of the world. Dolgan

Dolgan language

The Dolgan language is a Turkic language with around 5,000 speakers, spoken in the Taymyr Peninsula in Russia. Its speakers are known as the Dolgans.-Classification:...

, a close relative of Sakha, considered by some a dialect, is spoken by Dolgans

Dolgans

Dolgans are a Turkic-speaking people, who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The 2002 Census counted 7,261 Dolgans. This number includes 5,517 in former Taymyr Autonomous Okrug. There are 26 Dolgans in Ukraine, four of whom speak Dolgan .Dolgans speak Dolgan language. Some believe that it is...

in Krasnoyarsk Region. Sakha is widely used as a lingua franca

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...

by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic – more Dolgans

Dolgans

, Evenks

Evenks

The Evenks are a Tungusic people of Northern Asia. In Russia, the Evenks are recognized as one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, with a population of 35,527...

, Evens

Evens

The Evens or Eveny are a people in Siberia and the Russian Far East. They live in some of the regions of the Magadan Oblast and Kamchatka Krai and northern parts of Sakha east of the Lena River. According to the 2002 census, there were 19,071 Evens in Russia...

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.

Phonology

One characteristic feature of Sakha is vowel harmony

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.

Consonants

| Consonant phonemes of Sakha
	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...		Dental		Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...		Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m		n			ɲ		ŋ
Plosive Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p	b	t	d		c	ɟ	k	ɡ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...					s			x	ɣ	h
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...					l	j, ȷ̃
Tap					ɾ

Vowels

caption| Vowel phonemes of Sakha
		Short		Long		Diphthong Diphthong A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
		Close	Open	Close	Open
Front	Unrounded	i	e	iː	eː	ie
Front	Rounded	y	ø	yː	øː	yø
Back	Unrounded	ɯ	a	ɯː	aː	ɯa
Back	Rounded	u	o	uː	oː	uo

Writing system

Sakha is written using the Cyrillic script

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

: the modern Sakha alphabet, established in 1939 by the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, consists of the usual Russian characters but with 5 additional letters: , , , , .

Сахалыы сурук-бичигэ Saxalii suruk-bichige (Sakha alphabet)

Letter	Name	IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...	Note	Official Latin
А а	а	/a/		A a
Б б	бэ	/b/		B b
В в	вэ	/v/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	V v
Г г	гэ	/ɡ/		G g
Ҕ ҕ	ҕэ	/ɣ, ʁ/		G‘ g‘
Д д	дэ	/d/		D d
Дь дь	дьэ	/ɟ/		D‘ d‘
Е е	е	/e, je/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Ye ye or e
Ё ё	ё	/jo/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Yo yo
Ж ж	жэ	/ʒ/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	J j
З з	зэ	/z/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Z z
И и	и	/i/		I i
Й й	йот	/j, ȷ̃/	Nasalization of the glide Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:... is not indicated in the orthography Orthography The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...	Y y
К к	ка	/k, q/		K k or Q q
Л л	эл	/l/		L l
М м	эм	/m/		M m
Н н	эн	/n/		N n
Ҥ ҥ	эҥ	/ŋ/		Ng ng
Нь нь	эньэ	/ɲ/		N‘ n‘
О о	о	/o/		O o
Ө ө	ө	/ø/		O‘ o‘
П п	пэ	/p/		P p
Р р	эр	/ɾ/		R r
С с	эс	/s/		S s
Һ һ	һэ	/h/		H h
Т т	тэ	/t/		T t
У у	у	/u/		U u
Ү ү	ү	/y/		U‘ u‘
Ф ф	эф	/f/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	F f
Х х	ха	/x/		X x
Ц ц	цэ	/ts/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Ts ts
Ч ч	че	/c/		Ch ch
Ш ш	ша	/ʃ/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Sh sh
Щ щ	ща	/ɕː/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Shch shch
Ъ ъ	кытаатыннарар бэлиэ	/◌./	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	'
Ы ы	ы	/ɯ/		I i
Ь ь	сымнатыы бэлиэтэ	/◌ʲ/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	‘
Э э	э	/e/		E e
Ю ю	ю	/ju/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Yu yu
Я я	я	/ja/	found only in Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... loanwords	Ya ya

Syntax

The typical word order can be summarized as subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

adverb

Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....

– object

Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...

– verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

; possessor

Possession (linguistics)

Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....

– possessed

Possession (linguistics)

Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....

; noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

– adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

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

Grammatical gender

, but the pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

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.

Pronouns

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

	Singular	Plural
1st	мин (min)	биһиги (bihigi)
2nd	эн (en)	эһиги (ehigi)
3rd	кини (kini)	кинилэр (kiniler)

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 (xannık) "which".

Numbers

In this table, the Sakha numbers are written in Latin transcription (see Writing system).

Old Turkic	Turkish Turkish language Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...	Sakha Sakha Sakha may refer to:* Sakha language, or Yakut, a Turkic language* Sakha people, also Yakuts, a Turkic people* Sakha Republic, a federal subject of Russia* Sakha scripts, writing systems for the Sakha language* Xois, a town in Egypt also known as Sakha...	English English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
Bir	Bir	Biir	One
Eki	İki	Ikki	Two
Üç	Üç	U‘s	Three
Tört	Dört	Tu‘o‘rt	Four
Beş	Beş	Bias	Five
Altı	Altı	Alta	Six
Yeti	Yedi	Satta	Seven
Sekiz	Sekiz	Ag‘is	Eight
Tokuz	Dokuz	Tog‘us	Nine
On	On	Uon	Ten

Literature

The first printing in Sakha was a part of a book by Nicolaas Witsen published in 1692 in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

.

In 2005, Marianne Beerle-Moor, director of the Institute for Bible Translation, Russia/CIS

Institute for Bible Translation

The Institute for Bible Translation was founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973 by Borislav Arapovic, its main task being to publish Bibles for "non-Slavic peoples in Slavic countries." These 85 million people in non-Slavic ethnic groups living in the former Soviet Union - now CIS, including Russia -...

, was awarded the “Civil Valour” Order for the translation of the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

into Sakha.

Classification

Geographic distribution

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Writing system

Syntax

Nouns

Pronouns

Questions

Numbers

Literature

See also

Language-related

Content in Sakha