Kalmyk (), formerly anglicized as Calmuck, is a variety of the Oirat language, natively spoken by the Kalmyk people of Kalmykia, a federal subject of Russia. In Russia's Kalmykia, the modern Kalmyk language is the standard form of the Oirat Mongolian that based on the Torgut dialect, which belongs to the Mongolic language family. The Kalmyk people of the Northwest Caspian Sea of Russia claim descent from the Oirats from Eurasia, who have also historically settled in Mongolia and Northwest China. According to UNESCO, the language is "definitely endangered".UNESCO Atlas of the World's languages in danger Retrieved on 2012-10-31 According to the Russian census of 2021, there are 110,000 speakers out of an ethnic population consisting of 178,000 people.
History Kalmyk's endangerment as a living language began after the Kalmyk people were deported en masse from their homeland in December 1943, as punishment for limited Kalmyk collaboration with the Nazis. Significant factors contributing to its demise include: (1) the deaths of a substantial percentage of the Kalmyk population from disease and malnutrition, both during their travel and upon their arrival to remote exile settlements in Central Asia, south central Siberia and the Soviet Far East; (2) the wide dispersal of the Kalmyk population; (3) the duration of exile, which ended in 1957; (4) the stigma associated with being accused of treason, and (5) assimilation into the larger, more dominant culture. Collectively, these factors discontinued the intergenerational language transmission. Today, virtually all Kalmyk speakers are bilingual in Russian, with many speaking it as a first language, and in a 2024 study only 11.2% of speakers rated themselves as fully fluent speakers of the language.
In 1957, the Soviet government reinstated the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast and later reestablished the Autonomous Republic of Kalmykia. The Kalmyk people were permitted to return to the Republic in 1957, 14 years after exile. The Russian language, however, was made the official language of the Republic, and Sovietisation was imposed on the Kalmyk people, leading to drastic cuts in Kalmyk language education. The Cyrillic alphabet became firmly established among the Kalmyks (and other peoples, too). For instance, books, periodicals, newspapers, etc., were published using it. By the late 1970s, the Russian language became the primary language of instruction in all schools in the Republic.
During the period of Perestroika, Kalmyk linguists, in collaboration with the Kalmyk government, planned and tried to implement the revival of the Kalmyk language. This revival was seen as an integral part of the reassertion of Kalmyk culture. In an important symbolic gesture, the Kalmyk language was declared an official language of the Republic, giving it equal status with the Russian language with respect to official governmental use and language education.
During the production of the film Return of the Jedi, sound designer Rafe Mercieca—with his life-time partner Ben Curtis—based the language of the Ewoks on Kalmyk after hearing it spoken in a documentary and being impressed with its phonology.
Geographic distribution The majority of Kalmyk language speakers live in the Republic of Kalmykia, where it is an official language. A small group of Kalmyk language speakers also live in France and the US, but the use of Kalmyk is in steep decline. In all three locations, the actual number of speakers is unknown.
As of 2012, the Kalmyk community in New Jersey, which arrived in the US in the 1950s, was planning to work with the Enduring Voices project to promote Kalmyk language and culture.
Linguistic classification From a synchronic perspective, Kalmyk is the most prominent variety of Oirat. It is very close to the Oirat dialects found in Mongolia and the People's Republic of China, both phonologically and morphologically. The differences in dialects, however, concern the vocabulary, as the Kalmyk language has been influenced by and has adopted words from the Russian language and various Turkic languages.
Two important features that characterise Kalmyk are agglutination and vowel harmony. In an agglutinative language, words are formed by adding affixes to existing words, called stem words or root words. Prefixes, however, are not common in Mongolic. Vowel harmony refers to the agreement between the vowels in the root of a word and the vowels in the word's suffix or suffixes. Other features include the absence of grammatical gender.
It has some elements in common with the Uralic and Uyghur languages, which reflects its origin from the common language of the Oirats, a union of four Oirat tribes that absorbed some Ugric and Turkic tribes during their expansion westward.
Phonology Similar to Middle Mongol and Written Oirat but unlike Mongolian proper, Kalmyk exhibits front-back vowel harmony. Unlike Middle Mongol, however, consonants are not restricted by harmony. For instance, the voiced velar fricative can appear in both front and back vowel words, e.g. "good" and һалун /ɣalun/ "goose". Nonetheless, all consonants and neutral reduced vowel are influenced by harmonic status of a word, at least phonetically. The harmonic vowel pairs are: ~, ~, ~, ~, the last pair being allophonic.
Historical long vowels in non-initial syllables have been reduced to short vowels, while historical short vowels have been reduced to schwa and then, just like in Mongolian, were replaced according to language's phonotactics. For example, Written Oirat ɣarān "hand-" became ; ɣarɣaqsan "to get out--" became . Long vowels and diphthongs in one-syllable words have been also reduced to short vowels: sayin "good" > /sæn/. Nevertheless, in inflected forms of such words, short vowels tend to become elongated: "good" > "good-", "man"> "man-". Despite that, long vowels still may be pronounced in non-initial syllables. This happens if a word consists of three syllables, second of which has a vowel or , and third syllable has a reduced vowel . Examples include "saiga", "during", "a while ago", "land-".
Consonants The following is an outline of the consonant system of Kalmyk. Note that since virtually all speakers of Kalmyk are bilingual, recent borrowings from Russian do not undergo phonological adaptation and are pronounced according to the rules of Russian phonology, including those of vowel reduction and stress.
+Consonants of Kalmyk LabialAlveolarPost-AlveolarDorsal Nasal м н нь ң Plosive п т ть к б д дь г Affricate ц ч җ Fricative ( ф) с ш х () з һApproximant в л ль йTrill р
The voiceless labiodental fricative /f/ occurs only in loanwords and onomatopoeic terms; The voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ may also be released as a uvular plosive in the word-initial position as well as uvular fricative in any position, including initial; The voiceless velar fricative /x/ may also be pronounced as uvular ; The voiced labial approximant /w/ may be released as the voiced bilabial fricative [β]; The velar nasal /ŋ/ is often pronounced with a velar plosive or at the end, e.g. дөң [døŋk] "help", саң [saŋk] "treasury", маңна [maŋgna] "forehead".
Vowels + VowelsFrontCentralBackClose и ии ү үү() ы у ууMid е ее ө өө о ооOpen ә әә а аа
The mid central vowel /ə/ is represented in the Cyrillic orthography; The open back vowel is phonetically realized as central ; The (historically reduced) vowel /ə/ is phonetically released as in harmonically front-vowel words, as in back-vowel words, and as after palatal and post-alveolar consonants /nʲ tʲ dʲ t͡ɕ d͡ʑ ʃ lʲ j/; Although not always manifested orthographically, is an allophone of /i/ that is only present in the hortative, genitive and accusative suffixes when attached to back-vowel words—it has no long vowel equivalent; In native words, vowels /o oː/ and /ø øː/ can only appear in word-initial syllables.
Devoicing and assimilation Orthographic voiced stops d, g are devoiced: келәд /kelæt/ "to speak-", бөлг /bølək/ "chapter". Devoicing also occurs whenever there is a two-consonant cluster with one consonant being voiceless: /bolʃko/ "may not", таңһч /taŋxt͡ɕə/ "republic". Consonant clusters exhibit other types of assimilation: /kx/, /gx/, /xx/ > /kk/, /kk/, /xk/: закх /zakxə~zakkə/ "to order"; өргх /ørkxə~ørkkə/ "to raise" хатхх /xatxxə~xatxkə/ "to poke"; /n/ + /b/ > /mb/: кен /ken/ "who" + б /bə/ "" > кемб /kembə/ "who-"; /w/ + /n/ > /mn/: тәв- /tæv-/ "to put" + /-næ/ "" > тәмнә /tæmnæ/ "to put-"; /w/ + voiceless consonant > /p/: ав- /awə/ "to take" + чк /t͡ɕkə/ "> апчк /apt͡ɕkə/ "to put-"; /t͡ɕ/ + /l/ or /t/ > /ʃl/, /ʃt/: көвүчлх /køvyt͡ɕəlxə/ > көвүшлх /køvyʃəlxə/ "to adopt", ачтн /at͡ɕtən/ > аштн /aʃtən/ "to load-"; /n/ > /ŋ/ before consonants /ɣ, g, x, k, s/: Written Oirat sonosxu "to listen" > соңсх /soŋksxə/, түрүн /tyryn/ "first" + к /kə/ "" > түрүңк /tyryŋkə/ "first-"; /l/ is palatalised to /lʲ/ before palatal affricates /t͡ɕ d͡ʑ/: болҗ /bolʲd͡ʑə/ "to become-".
The voiced bilabial stop /b/, being only restricted to word-initial position, may be pronounced as in a phrase: келҗ бәәнә /kelʲd͡ʑə bæːnæ/ > [kelʲd͡ʑ βæːnæ] "to speak- to be-".
The labial approximant or fricative /w/ can be pronounced as: Close rounded vowel or in past tense inflection: кел- /kelʲ-/ "to say" + -в /w/ "" + -в /w/ "" > келүв /kelyw/ "I said" or in consonant clusters: тарвс /tarvəs/ > тарус /tarus/ "watermelon" Voiced bilabial stop [b] in past tense inflection, if the verb stem ends in /-w/: ав- /aw-/ "to take" + -в /-w/ "" > /awbə/ "took".
Vowel reduction and phonotactics Word-initial syllable structure is (C)V(V)(C), meaning that in native words no word-initial clusters can occur. For non-initial syllables, however, a syllable-initial cluster of up to four consonants is allowed, meaning the maximal syllable is CCCCVC. In some consonant clusters such as /tl tn dn dl/ a sonorant becomes syllabic. These clusters are also nasally and laterally released, respectively.
The reduced vowel /ə/ is regularly preserved and can be a syllable nucleus in the following cases: In a word-final position: ик /i.kə/ "big", арат /a.ra.tə/ "fox", чон /t͡ɕo.nə/ "wolf"; If, word-finally, there is either a closed syllable or a final open syllable with a consonant cluster: эцкнр /et͡s.kə.nər/ "father-" келчксн /kelʲ.t͡sək.sən/ "to say--" соңсгдна /soŋk.sə.gdna/ "to hear--"; In closed non-final syllables of a multisyllabic word: шорһлҗн /ʃor.ɣəlʲ.d͡ʑən/ "ant", әәмшгтә /æ:m.ʃək.tæ/ "dangerous"; Word-finally in the following affixes: Ablative -ас /-asə/; Accusative -иг /-igə/, -г /-gə/; Adjective suffix -к /-kə/; Completive -чк /-t͡ɕkə/; Imperfective converb, admirative and evidential suffix -җ /-dʑə/; Dative -д /-də/; Negation particle эс /esə/; Present tense negation particle (or suffix) биш, -ш /biʃə/ /-ʃə/; Future tense participle -х /-xə/.
On the other hand, the vowel /ə/ cannot form syllables on its own if the following is true: If the following syllable is open: бичх /bi.t͡ɕxə/ "to write", өгх /øk.kxə/ "to give"; In inflections of two-syllable words, if the second syllable of an inflected word has a non-reduced vowel, e.g. мөрн /mørən/ "horse" > мөрта mørtæ "with a horse", церг /t͡se.rək/ "army" > церглә /t͡serglæ/ "with an army"; If the following syllable is open and has non-reduced vowel: тоһрун */to.ɣə.run/ > /to.ɣrun/ "grus"; шамдһа */ʃam.də.ɣa/ > /ʃam.dɣa/ "sneaky". In this case, however, reduced syllables may be released phonetically, although they do not play a role in syllable forming.;
Two-syllable words with schwa as a nucleus of the second syllable may undergo metathesis, thus creating an open syllable: Written Oirat oros "Russian" > /orəs/ > /orsə/; ulus "country, people" > /uləs/ > /ulsə/; oyirad "Oirat" > /øːrət/ > /øːrdə/.
Stress Kalmyk exhibits non-phonemic stress with the last syllable (even if it ends in schwa) being stressed. It is phonetically realized as a high-pitch syllable.
Writing systems