Kalmyk language
Encyclopedia
The Kalmyk language or Russian Oirat, is the native speech of the Kalmyk people
of the Republic of Kalmykia, a federal subject of the Russian Federation. In Russia, it is the normative form
of the Oirat language
(based on the Torgut dialect), which belongs to the Mongolic
language family. The Oirat people are scattered throughout Eurasia
, with substantial groups located in western Mongolia
, the northwest region (mainly Xinjiang
) of the People’s Republic of China and the northwest coast of the Caspian Sea
in the Russian Federation, where they became known as Kalmyks.
, 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 falsely accused of treason, and (5) assimilation into the larger, more dominant culture. Collectively, these factors discontinued the intergenerational language transmission.
The Kalmyk people were permitted to return to their homeland in 1957 after 14 years in exile. In concurrence with their return, the Soviet government reinstated the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast
and later reestablished the Autonomous Republic of Kalmykia. The Russian language
, however, was made the official language of the Republic, and Sovietization 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.
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 characterize Kalmyk are agglutination
and vowel harmony
. In an agglutinative language
, words are formed by added suffixes to existing word
s, 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
(with its distinctions of masculine, feminine, and neuter).
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.
script was used. The official Kalmyk alphabet, named Todo Bichig
(Clear Script), was created in the 17th century by a Kalmyk Buddhist monk called Zaya Pandit
. In 1924 this script was replaced by a Cyrillic script, which was abandoned in 1930 in favor of a Latin script. The Latin script was in turn replaced by another Cyrillic script in 1938. These script reforms effectively disrupted the Oirat literary tradition.
The modified Cyrillic alphabet used for the Kalmyk language is as follows:
Kalmyk people
Kalmyk people is the name given to the Oirats, western Mongols in Russia, whose descendants migrated from Dzhungaria in 1607. Today they form a majority in the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Kalmykia is Europe's only Buddhist government...
of the Republic of Kalmykia, a federal subject of the Russian Federation. In Russia, it is the normative form
Standard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
of the Oirat language
Oirat language
Oirat belongs to the group of Mongolic languages. Scholars differ as to whether Oirat is a distinct language or a major dialect of the Mongolian language...
(based on the Torgut dialect), which belongs to the Mongolic
Mongolic languages
The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner...
language family. The Oirat people are scattered throughout Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
, with substantial groups located in western Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
, the northwest region (mainly Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
) of the People’s Republic of China and the northwest coast of the Caspian Sea
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...
in the Russian Federation, where they became known as Kalmyks.
History
Kalmyk is now only spoken as a native language by a small minority of the Kalmyk population. Its decline as a living language began after the Kalmyk people were deported en masse from their homeland in December 1943, having been accused of collaborating 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 AsiaCentral Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
, south central Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
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 falsely accused of treason, and (5) assimilation into the larger, more dominant culture. Collectively, these factors discontinued the intergenerational language transmission.
The Kalmyk people were permitted to return to their homeland in 1957 after 14 years in exile. In concurrence with their return, the Soviet government reinstated the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast
Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast
Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast was an autonomy of the Kalmyk people within the Russian SFSR that existed at two separate periods.It was first established in November 1920. Its administrative center was Astrakhan. In June 1928, it was included into Lower Volga Krai...
and later reestablished the Autonomous Republic of Kalmykia. The Russian language
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...
, however, was made the official language of the Republic, and Sovietization 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
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
, 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.
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 USA, but the use of Kalmyk is in steep decline. In all three locations, the actual number of speakers is unknown. Kalmyk is regarded as an endangered language.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 phonologicallyPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
and morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
. 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
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...
.
Two important features that characterize Kalmyk are agglutination
Agglutination
In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...
and 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....
. In 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...
, words are formed by added suffixes to existing word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
s, 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
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...
(with its distinctions of masculine, feminine, and neuter).
It has some elements in common with the Uralic
Ugric languages
Ugric or Ugrian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. The term derives from Yugra, a region in north-central Asia.They include three languages: Hungarian , Khanty , and Mansi language...
and Uyghur
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...
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.
Writing systems
The literary tradition of Oirat reaches back to 11th century when the UyghurUyghur language
Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...
script was used. The official Kalmyk alphabet, named Todo Bichig
Todo Bichig
Clear script is a Mongol alphabet created in 1648 by the Oirat Buddhist monk Zaya Pandita Oktorguin Dalai for the Oirat Mongol language...
(Clear Script), was created in the 17th century by a Kalmyk Buddhist monk called Zaya Pandit
Zaya Pandit
Zaya Pandita or Namkhaijantsan was a Buddhist missionary priest and scholar of Oirat origin who is the most prominent Oirat Buddhist scholar....
. In 1924 this script was replaced by a Cyrillic script, which was abandoned in 1930 in favor of a Latin script. The Latin script was in turn replaced by another Cyrillic script in 1938. These script reforms effectively disrupted the Oirat literary tradition.
The modified Cyrillic alphabet used for the Kalmyk language is as follows:
| Cyrillic | IPA | Transliteration | Cyrillic | IPA | Transliteration | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Аа | a | a | Оо | ɔ | o | |
| Әә | æ | ä | Өө | o | ö | |
| Бб | p, pʲ | b | Пп | (pʰ, pʲʰ) | p | |
| Вв | w, wʲ | v, w | Рр | r, rʲ | r | |
| Гг | ɡ, ɡʲ, ɢ | g | Сс | s | s | |
| Һһ | h | gh | Тт | tʰ, tʲʰ | t | |
| Дд | t, tʲ | d | Уу | ʊ | u | |
| Ее | je | ye | Үү Ue (Cyrillic) Ue or Straight U is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is a form of the Cyrillic letter U with a vertical, rather than diagonal, center line... |
u | ü | |
| Ёё | jɔ | yo | Фф | (f) | f | |
| Жж | tʃ | zh | Хх | x, xʲ | h | |
| Җҗ | dʒ | dzh, j | Цц | tsʰ | ts | |
| Зз | ts | (d)z | Чч | tʃʰ | ch | |
| Ии | i | i | Шш | ʃ | sh | |
| Йй | j | y | Щщ | (stʃ) | shch | |
| Кк | (k, kʲ) | k | Ыы | i | y | |
| Лл | ɮ, ɮʲ | l | Ьь | ʲ | ' | |
| Мм | m, mʲ | m | Ээ | e | e | |
| Нн | n, nʲ | n | Юю | jʊ | yu | |
| Ңң | ŋ | ng | Яя | ja | ya |