The Udege language is the language of the Udege people. It is a member of the Tungusic family

Tungusic languages

The Tungusic languages form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain...

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Vocabulary

Udege contains a variety of loanwords from the closely related Nanai language

Nanai language

The Nanai language is spoken by the Nanai people in Siberia, and to a much smaller extent in China's Heilongjiang province, where it is known as Hezhe...

, which have supplanted some older Udege vocabulary, such as:

• [banixe] (thank you), from Nanai [banixa], instead of Udege [usasa] (work), from Nanai [dœbo], instead of Udege [etete] (book) from Nanai [daŋsa], itself a loanword from Chinese 單子 (Pinyin
  Pinyin
  Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
  
  : ), which actually means "list"

In general, a large degree of mutual assimilation of the two languages has been observed in the Bikin region. Udege has also exerted phonological influence on the Bikin dialect of Nanai, including monopthongisation of diphthongs, denasalisation of nasal vowels, deletion of reduced final vowels, epenthetic vowel preventing consonant final words, and the deletion of intervocalic [w].

Orthography

1931-1937 alphabet

A a	Ā ā	B в	Є є	D d	Ӡ ӡ	E e	Ē ē
Æ æ	F f	G g	H h	I i	Ī ī	J j	K k
L l	M m	N n	Ņ ņ	Ŋ ŋ	O o	Ō ō	Ө ө
P p	R r	S s	T t	U u	Ū ū	W w	X x
Y y	Z z	’