Yakut ( ), also known as Sakha ( ) or Yakutian, is a Siberian Turkic language spoken by around 450,000 native speakers—primarily by ethnic Yakuts, but also by the Evenki, Even, Yukaghir and the Starozhily peoples. It is one of the official languages of the Sakha Republic, a republic in the Russian Federation.
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. Like other Turkic languages, Yakut is an agglutinative language and features vowel harmony.
Classification 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 (Vasily Radlov, Otto von Böhtlingk, and others) have expressed the view that Sakha (i.e. Yakut) is not Turkic.
Geographic distribution 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.Russian Census 2002. 6. Владение языками (кроме русского) населением отдельных национальностей по республикам, автономной области и автономным округам Российской Федерации (Knowledge of languages other than Russian by the population of republics, autonomous oblast and autonomous districts)
Phonology
Consonants 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.
+ Consonant phonemes of Yakut Bilabial Dental/alveolar Palatal Velar/uvular Glottal Nasal м (m) н (n) нь (ń) ҥ (ŋ) Plosive /Affricate п (p) т (t) ч (č) к (k) б (b) д (d) дь (ǰ) г (g) Fricative с (s) х (x) һ (h) ҕ (ɣ) Approximant л (l) й (y) ҋ (ỹ) Flap р (r)
are laminal denti-alveolar , whereas are alveolar . The nasal glide is not distinguished from in the orthography, where both are written as . Thus айыы can be ayïï 'deed, creation, work' or aỹïï 'sin, transgression'. The nasal glide has a very restricted distribution, appearing in very few words. is pronounced as a flap between vowels, e.g. орон (oron) 'place', and as a trill at the end of words, e.g. тур (tur) 'stand'. does not occur at the beginning of words in native Yakut words; borrowed Russian words with onset 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 .
Consonant assimilation
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. Examples of each are provided in the following table for the suffixes -GIt (second-person plural possessive suffix, oɣoɣut 'your [pl.] child'), -BIt (first-person plural possessive suffix, oɣobut, 'our child'), -TA (partitive case suffix, 'some teeth'), -LArA (third-person plural possessive suffix, oɣoloro 'their child'). Note that the alternation in the vowels is governed by vowel harmony (see the main article and the below section).
+ Yakut consonant assimilation in suffixesConsonantarchiphoneme Immediately preceding sound (example) High vowel i, u, ï, ü(kihi) Low vowel a, e, o, ö(oɣo) (uol) (kötör) Voiceless consonants (tiis) (ïnaχ) Nasal(oron) G-GIt kihi-git oɣo-ɣut uol-gut kötör-güt tiis-kit ïnaχ-χït oroŋ-ŋut B-BIt kihi-bit oɣo-but uol-but kötör-büt tiis-pit ïnaχ-pït orom-mut T-TA kihi-te oɣo-to uol-la kötör-dö tiis-te ïnaχ-ta oron-no L-LArA kihi-lere oɣo-loro uol-lara kötör-dörö tiis-tere ïnaχ-tara oron-noro 'person' 'child' 'boy' 'bird' 'tooth' 'cow' 'bed'
There is an additional regular morphophonological pattern for -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'.
Debuccalization
Yakut initial s- corresponds to initial h- in Dolgan and played an important operative rule in the development of proto-Yakut, ultimately resulting in initial Ø- < *h- < *s- (example: Dolgan huoq and Yakut suox, both meaning "not"). 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 becomes . For example the /s/ in кыыс (kïïs) 'girl' becomes [h] between vowels:
Vowels
Yakut has twenty phonemic vowels: eight short vowels, eight long vowels, and four diphthongs. The following table gives broad transcriptions for each vowel phoneme, as well as the native script bold and romanization in italics:
+ Vowel phonemes of Yakut Front Back Close и (i) ү (ü) ы (ï) у (u) ии (ii) үү (üü) ыы (ïï) уу (uu) Diphthong иэ (ie) үө (üö) ыа (ïa) уо (uo) Open э (e) ө (ö) а (a) о (o) ээ (ee) өө (öö) аа (aa) оо (oo)
Vowel harmony
Like other Turkic languages, a characteristic feature of Yakut is progressive vowel harmony. Most root words obey vowel harmony, for example in кэлин (kelin) 'back', all the vowels are front and unrounded, whereas in олоборун (oloborun) 'I live', all the vowels are back and rounded. Yakut's vowel harmony in suffixes is the most complex system in the Turkic family. Vowel harmony is an assimilation process where vowels in one syllable take on certain features of vowels in the preceding syllable. In Yakut, subsequent vowels all take on frontness and all non-low vowels take on lip rounding of preceding syllables' vowels. There are two main rules of vowel harmony:
Frontness/backness harmony: Front vowels are always followed by front vowels. Back vowels are always followed by back vowels. Rounding harmony: Unrounded vowels are always followed by unrounded vowels. Close rounded vowels always occur after close rounded vowels. Open unrounded vowels do not assimilate in rounding with close rounded vowels.
The quality of the diphthongs /ie, ïa, uo, üö/ for the purposes of vowel harmony is determined by the first segment in the diphthong. Taken together, these rules mean that the pattern of subsequent syllables in Yakut is entirely predictable, and all words will follow the following pattern: Like the consonant assimilation rules above, suffixes display numerous allomorphs determined by the stem they attach to. There are two archiphoneme vowels I (an underlyingly high vowel) and A (an underlyingly low vowel).
+ Yakut vowel harmony Category Final vowel in stem Suffix vowels Unrounded, back a, aa, ï, ïï, ïa a, aa, ï, ïï, ïa Unrounded, front e, ee, i, ii, ie e, ee, i, ii, ie Rounded back u, uu, uo a, aa, u, uu, uo Rounded, front, close ü, üü, üö e, ee, ü, üü, üö Rounded, back o, oo o, oo, u, uu, uo Rounded, open, low ö, öö ö, öö, ü, üü, üö + Vowel harmony of archiphonemic vowelsArchiphonemic vowelPreceding vowelFrontBackunrounded(i, ii, ie, e, ee)roundedunrounded (ï, ïï, ïa, a, aa)rounded high(ü, üü, üö) low(ö, öö) high(u, uu, uo) low(o, oo) I i ü ïu Ae öa o
Examples of I can be seen in the first-person singular possessive agreement suffix -(I)m: as in (a):
The underlyingly low vowel phoneme A is represented through the third-person singular agreement suffix -(t)A in (b):
Orthography
After three earlier phases of development, Yakut is currently written using the Cyrillic script: the modern Yakut alphabet, established in 1939 by the Soviet Union, consists of all the Russian characters with five additional letters and two digraphs for phonemes not present in Russian: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү, Дь дь, and Нь нь, as follows:
+ А а Б б В в Г г Ҕ ҕ Д д Дь дь Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Л л М м Н н Ҥ ҥ Нь нь О о Ө ө П п Р р С с Һ һ Т т У у Ү ү Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
Yakut alphabet, letter names, IPA values А Б В Г Ҕ Д Дь Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н Ҥ Нь О Ө П Р С Һ Т У Ү Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я а бэ вэ гэ ҕэ дэ дьэ е ё жэ зэ и ый кы эл эм эн ҥэ ньэ о ө пэ эр эс һэ тэ у ү эф хэ цэ че ша ща ы э ю я ,
Long vowels are represented through the doubling of vowels, e.g. үүт (üüt) 'milk', a practice that many scholars follow in romanizations of the language.
The full Yakut alphabet contains letters for consonant phonemes not present in native words (and thus not indicated in the phonology tables above): the letters В , Е //, Ё /|/, Ж , З , Ф , Ц , Ш , Щ , Ъ, Ю //, Я // are used exclusively in Russian loanwords. In addition, in native Yakut words, the soft sign is used exclusively in the digraphs and .
Transliteration
There are numerous conventions for the Romanization of Yakut. Bibliographic sources and libraries typically use the ALA-LC Romanization tables for non-Slavic languages in Cyrillic script. Linguists often employ Turkological standards for transliteration,; ; ; or a mixture of Turkological standards and the IPA. In addition, others employ Turkish orthography. Comparison of some of these systems can be seen in the following:
+ Comparison of different conventions for transcribing Yakut дьон айыы бу ыт аттааҕар түргэнник сүүрэр эһэ бөрөтөөҕөр күүстээхыһыах IPA // // // // // // // // // // Krueger ǰon ajıı bu ıt attaaɣar türgennik süürer ehe böröötööɣör küüsteeχıhıaχ ǰon ayï: bu ït atta:ɣar türgännik sü:rär ähä börötö:ɣör kü:stä:χïhïaχ ʤon ïyïː bu ït attaːɣar türgennik süːrer ehe börötöːɣör kü:steːχïhïaχ ALA-LC d'on aĭyy bu yt attaaghar tu̇rgennik su̇u̇rer eḣe bȯrȯtȯȯghȯr ku̇u̇steekhyḣyakh KNAB djon ajy: bu yt atta:ǧar türgennik sü:rer eḩe börötö:ǧör kü:ste:hyḩyah Turkish orthography con ayıı bu ıt attaağar türgennik süürer ehe börötööğör küüsteexıhıaxWiktionaryjonayııbuıtattaağartürgenniksüürerehebörötööğörküüsteeqıhıaq
Grammar
Syntax The typical word order can be summarized as subject – adverb – object – verb; possessor – possessed; adjective – noun.
Pronouns Personal pronouns in Yakut distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number.
Singular Plural 1st person () () 2nd person () () 3rd personhuman () ()non-human () ()