Dolgan language

Dolgan
Дулҕан Dulğan, Һака Haka
Native to	Russia
Region	Krasnoyarsk Krai
Ethnicity	Dolgans
Native speakers	1,100 (2010 census)[1]
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Siberian Turkic Northern Dolgan
Language codes
ISO 639-3	dlg
Glottolog	dolg1241[2]
Sakha (blue) and Dolgan (green)

The Dolgan language is a Turkic language with around 1,000 speakers, spoken in the Taymyr Peninsula in Russia.^[3] The speakers are known as the Dolgans. The word "Dolgan" means 'people living on the middle reaches of the river'. This is most likely signifying the geographical location of the Dolgan people.^[4]

The language is very local and restricted to a certain area, and has declined in usage over the years. As of 2010 there are only about 1,050 speakers of the language.^[5] The language has expressed a few changes since the beginning of its formation, such as alphabet and phrasing terms. The issue as of recently has become the weak integration of this local language within families with mixed marriages. Instead of speaking either of the parents' local languages, the family incorporates Russian as the more dominant language to ease interfamilial and external communication.^[6] This results in children learning the local language, Dolgan, only a little bit or as a second language, and over generations it continues to fade.

Classification

Dolgan is a member of the Northern Turkic family of languages along with its closest relative, Sakha (Yakut). Like Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish, Dolgan has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually subject–object–verb.

Sample comparison with Yakut

Geographical distribution

History

The Dolgan language started out having a Latin alphabet in the early 20th century. Over time, the Cyrillic alphabet was implemented instead since it is the same alphabet used by the related language, Yakut. Evenki's influence on Dolgan can explain, in part, why it is considered a separate language from Yakut.^[8] Dolgan has made appearances in newspapers, such as Taymyr, as well as schools starting around the time of the 60s.^[3] However, now there are only around 1,050 speakers of the language.

Certain words in the language were developed from geographical implications that have been present since the start of the Dolgan Language. For instance, the directional terms ta¯s (1. south 2. east) and muora (1. north 2. west) are representative of the corresponding landscapes.^[9] Ta¯s is related to the word stone, and the southeast topography of the native region, Taimyr, is covered by the Putorana Mountains. Similarly, muora denotes "sea" where the western zone of Taimyr has access to the sea shore.

However, this is not true for all directional terms, nor all words of the Dolgan language. Southwest, uhä , and northeast, allara, have no significance in geographical terms relative to Taymyr.

Grammar

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Lateral	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		tʲ	k
	voiced	b	d		dʲ	ɡ
Fricative			s				h
Affricate	voiceless				tʃ
	voiced				dʒ
Nasal		m	n		nʲ	ŋ
Liquid			r	l
Approximant					j

^[10]

Alphabet of Dolgan with its pronunciations

Dolgan has the following phonetic characteristics:

• diphthongisation of the Turkish medium vowels [o, e, ö] in the root syllable
• accent the last syllable of the word
• labial and palatal vowel harmony in the native words
• transition of the initial Turkish c- into h- , loss of the uvular x, ҕ: Yakut ; саха ~ Dolgan hака (self)

Vocabulary

• Much of the old Yakut language was lost
• lack of modern political and scientific terminology
• change in the meaning of words under the influence of the Turkish semantic system
• extensive borrowing from the Russian and Turkish language

Writing system

Over time, the language itself has changed and adapted. Even during the time period when it had a Cyrillic alphabet, it changed over the years. The first version of alphabet of the language had the following appearance: А а, Б б, В в, Г г, Д д, Дь дь, Е е, Ё ё, Ж ж, З з, И и, Иэ иэ, Й й, К к, Л л, М м, Н н, Ӈ ӈ, Ӈь ӈь, О о, Ө ө, П п, Р р, С с, Т т, У у, Уо уо, Ү ү, Үө үө, Ф ф, Х х, Һ һ, Ц ц, Ч ч, Ш ш, Щ щ, Ъ ъ, Ы ы, Ыа ыа, Ь ь, Э э, Ю ю, Я я.^[11]

The current Dolgan alphabet is still Cyrillic and looks as follows:

Examples

hello : дорообо

mountain : кайа

mother : иньэ

I love you : мин энигин таптыыбын

birthday : төрөөбүт күн

day after tomorrow : өйүүн

dog : ыт

See also

• Dolgans

Further reading

• Stachowski, M.: Dolganischer Wortschatz, Kraków 1993 (+ Dolganischer Wortschatz. Supplementband, Kraków 1998).
• Stachowski, M.: Dolganische Wortbildung, Kraków 1997.

Bibliography

Ager, Simon. (2011). Dolgan. Omniglot. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ dolgan.htm.

Dolgikh, B. O. (1963). Proiskhozhdenie Dolgan (Origin of the Dolgan). Trudy Instituta, Etnografii AN SSSR 84:92-141.

Grachyova, Galina. (1990). Dolgan. In Collis, Dirmid R. F. (ed.), Arctic Languages: An Awakening, 112-114.

Grenoble, Lenore A. and Lindsay J. Whaley. (2006). Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lewis, E. Glyn. (1971). Migration and Language in the USSR. The International Migration Review: The Impact of Migration on Language Maintenance and Language Shift, 5(2), 147-179.

Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2016. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Nineteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Retrieved from http:// www.ethnologue.com.

Li, Yong-Sŏng. (2011). A study of Dolgan. (Altaic language series, 05.) Seoul: Seoul National University Press.

Marek, Stachowski. (2010). Considerations on the system and the origins of terms for the cardinal points in the Dolgan language. Incontri Linguistici, 33, 233-243. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3002797.pdf

Marten, H.F., Rießler, M., Saarikivi, J., Toivanen, R. (2015). Cultural and Linguistic Minorities in the Russian Federation and the European Union: Comparative Studies on Equality and Diversity. Switzerland: Springer.

Minahan, James B. (2014). Dolgan in Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia. (63-67). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Vahtre, Lauri. (1991). The Dolgans. The Red Book. Retrieved from https://www.eki.ee/books/ redbook/dolgans.shtml.

References

Dolgan language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator